Ottawa Research and Development Centre (ORDC)
ORDC has a national mandate for assessing and utilizing biodiversity and environmental resources for Canadian agriculture. The Centre has been at the forefront of pioneering gene isolation, gene transfer, and studying gene expression in crop plants for the last 25 years. It has a unique mandate to lead biosystematics research of vascular plants (botany), fungi, bacteria, and invertebrates (insects, arachnids and nematodes), relevant to agriculture. It also supports research conducted at other Research Centres in the areas of food safety, mycotoxins, and biocontrol.
Four biological collections of national importance are located at ORDC: the National Collection of Vascular Plants, the National Mycology Herbarium, the Canadian National Collection of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes, and the Canadian Collection of Fungal Cultures.
Access to AAFC and other federal and academic biodiversity data can be found on the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility portal: www.cbif.gc.ca
Objective:
The AAFC Biodiversity Bioinformatics group is committed to producing a DNA module for the DINA management system in addition to general support for core components of the project. The DNA module will be based on an in-house solution called SeqDB, which was developed to support our collection's genetic resources as well as manage several Biodiversity research projects.
Participants:
James Macklin, Research Scientist: Botany and Biodiversity Informatics [Co-Chair of the International Steering Committee]
Glen Newton, Manager - Biological Informatics Centre of Excellence [Representative on the Technical Committee]
Karen Cranston, Technical Adviser
Satpal Bilkhu, Biodiversity Bioinformatics Database Programmer - Sequence Database
Nazir El-Kayssi, Developer
Annisa Lybaert, Associate Director, Biodiversity and Collections