Bioinformatics in the plant genomic and phenomic domain: The German contribution to resources, services and perspectives

- Portfolio of services offered by GCBN - the plant bioinformatics node in de.NBI (German node of ELIXIR).
- Comprehensive overview of plant resources and services.
- Plant bioinformatics methods for the research community.

Plant genetic resources are a substantial opportunity for plant breeding, preservation and maintenance of biological diversity. As part of the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure (de.NBI) the German Crop BioGreenformatics Network (GCBN) focuses mainly on crop plants and provides both data and software infrastructure which are tailored to the needs of the plant research community. Our mission and key objectives include: (1) provision of transparent access to germplasm seeds, (2) the delivery of improved workflows for plant gene annotation, and (3) implementation of bioinformatics services that link genotypes and phenotypes. This review introduces the GCBN's spectrum of web-services and integrated data resources that address common research problems in the plant genomics community.