About

KOMUGI is an integrated database of wheat created by Japanese researchers in wheat sciences. "Komugi" is a Japanese word meaning wheat. This database was originally created in 1996 by a voluntary group of Japanese scientists who were concerned about the genetic stocks of wheat (the genus Triticum) and related species (the genus Aegilops) conserved in Japanese institutions. The genetic stocks include the original accessions of Triticum and Aegilops collected during expeditions led by the late Dr. H. Kihara and his colleagues to their places of origin. They also include research stocks of wheat that were produced by many scientists world-wide as shown in the table below and some accessions of rye and oats. KOMUGI also contains the Catalogue of Gene Symbols for Wheat and gene sequence data.

KOMUGI is managed by the Committee for the National BioResource Project (NBRP)/KOMUGI, supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan since 2002. The committee comprises 20 members from 13 institutions.

The Committee has been attempting to improve KOMUGI by avoiding duplicated registration and adding more information on the chromosomal constitutions and phenotypes (especially photographic images) of the seed stocks. It has also started to create substantial databases of DNA clones and sequences.

At present, the seed stocks and DNA clones are distributed on request by the individual researcher who registered them. In the near future they will be available from NBRP/KOMUGI after they have been well characterized in the project.