Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The DRASTIC database contains many examples of
Arabidopsis
genes that are
regulated by both abiotic stresses (drought, cold etc.) as well as by infection with a
range of fungal, bacterial and virus pathogens. It thereby provides valuable clues as
to the molecular basis of how such interactions might occur. The site also brings
together information on resistance-inducing compounds that are, or could be,
exploited as crop protectants. Current developments centre around text mining as a
very powerful tool capable of finding and relating documents on specific subjects to
bring together ideas and information from diverse sources in answer to a specific
query. We predict that the use of such tools will increase over the next decade as the
drive to synthesise diverse sources of information increases. Of course, powerful as
such software is, it can only work on data that have been placed on a computer
somewhere. Not all of the issues raised by Simmonds (1991) will disappear with
new software tools for data mining and management. However, the challenges in the
future will be to understand how to construct useful queries and how complex
information can be presented in an easily understood format. Indeed, the task of
simplifying the presentation of complex information is at the heart of many
problems related to biology in general, and epidemiology in particular and is one of
the drivers of the development of simple forecasting tools described below, and of
the use of methods for the evaluation of those tools.
Making knowledge useful requires synthesis and presentation. For example, the
wheat breeding community have done this for marker-assisted breeding tools
(maswheat.ucdavis.edu) and a similar site is planned for barley. Another example of
more epidemiological relevance is the Cereal Pathogen Resistance Allele Database
(CPRAD - www.scri.ac.uk/cprad). This catalogues information on the pathogen
resistance alleles reported to be found in genotypes of barley and, in future, wheat
and oats. It is fully searchable on a range of criteria and initial query results are
displayed in a table. From this table there are links to the source reference or to a
pedigree chart with all that is known about the inheritance of the selected allele. It
can also show all that is known about all pathogen resistance alleles in any of the
genotypes in the pedigree chart. The selected genotype is hypertext linked to display
the probabilities that these and other alleles present in the pedigrees are expressed in
the genotype. In this way, probabilities that these genes are present in the selected
variety but are masked by other genes, for example the
mlo
allele in barley, are
displayed. When this information is associated with virulence frequency and
virulence combination (race) data, predictions about the likely durability of a
variety can be made.
12.7 MODELS, EXPERT SYSTEMS AND DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS
There are many Decision Support Systems (DSSs) or software products that
integrate diverse information into a decision-making process. The Management
Advisory Package for Potato (MAPP: www.potatomapp.co.uk), for example, is a
software package that advises growers on seed rates, irrigation strategies and harvest
times in order to optimise financial returns based on graded yields. Other examples
are 'PC-Plant Protection' in Denmark, 'Plant Diagnosis', 'MoreCrop', 'Orchard
