Improving Plant Breeding Strategies through Enhanced Computational Capabilities for Analytical Platforms

The University of Kentucky (UK) is one of only eight universities in the United States that has colleges of agriculture, arts and sciences, engineering, medicine, and pharmacy on a single campus, leading to unique interdisciplinary collaborations and offering more than 200-degree programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MG-CAFE) serves the land-grant mission of research, education, extension, and outreach. To promote education while maintaining cutting-edge research, we have established an analytical core in MG-CAFE that houses several gas- (GC) and liquid-chromatography (LC) units. The Center for Agricultural and Life Science Metabolomics (CALM) provides important analytical services for a wide range of applications related to plant breeding for crop improvement and has capabilities to detect and measure metabolites like fatty acids, waxes, amino acids, sugars, hormones, cannabinoids, and vitamins. The analytical instruments at CALM are controlled using 7 computers. Three of these computers use Windows 7 operating system, which is no longer supported at UK. Consequently, we are unable to use Microsoft Office and this has adversely affected our ability to perform routine data analyses and send reports to the end users. It is essential that we upgrade both the analytical software as well as the computer. The proposed computer upgrades will tremendously strengthen our data analyses capabilities and allow us to cater to the diverse needs of CALM users. These upgrades will also provide us access to latest platforms necessary for data analysis and ensure continued success of on-going research.