**8. Conclusion**

USDA-ARS GRIN [104] cotton collection PI numbers. In order to resolve the discrepancies, the apparently unique lines that could be identified from the passport data were given an unique "cdbgm" ID in CottonGen, and the accession numbers or names from different collections or germplasm groups (such as the CMD panel), and alternate names cross-referenced to these CottonGen unique IDs. The unique ID, germplasm names and aliases were then expanded to include other germplasm from the GRIN Cotton Crop Science Registration, GRIN Plant Variety Protection (PVP), pedigrees of 642 Upland and 20 Pima cultivars, plus 205 parents representing most of the cotton breeding lines and obsolete cultivars, (kindly provided by Dr. Bowman [100], the cotton germplasm collection of the China Cotton Research Institute, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and the cotton germplasm collection of Uzbekistan Center of Genomics and Bioinformatics, Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. As a result of curation efforts, CottonGen currently contains 14,959 assigned unique IDs connected to 53,645 corre‐ sponding aliases obtained from 14 collections for 49 *Gossypium* spp. Access and display of

190 World Cotton Germplasm Resources

germplasm names (standardized and aliases) in CottonGen are shown in Figure 1.

**Figure 2.** Germplasm search site in CottonGen. A. Multiple germplasm search sites are available based on the type of information users are interested in. B. An example search interface where users can view and search for germplasm and their collection center. C. Germplasm detail page with various tabs to show the detailed information. D. Map tab of the germplasm page shows all the maps for which the germplasm has been used. E. From the map page users can

go to CMap for accessed to marker between and within maps, with hyperlinks to the markers detail page.

The National Cotton Germplasm Collection is a complex amalgamation of several previously existing collections, which present challenges to its continued growth, preservation, charac‐ terization, and evaluation. Although habitat loss and international treaties have had significant impact on germplasm collection and exchange efforts, the NCGC continues to grow through mutually beneficial collecting efforts and germplasm exchanges with cooperating countries. Given finite and sometimes constricting resources; efficiency and effectiveness in preserving, characterizing, and evaluating the collection's contents becomes imperative. One means of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the collection has been to enlist the research community in characterizing and evaluating the collection. Currently there are dynamic cooperative efforts to evaluate the collection for drought, heat, and other environmental stresses associated with global climate change. Efforts to find resistance to biotic stresses within the collection continue, as do efforts to identify positive variation within the collection for agronomic and fiber quality characteristics. The development of genetic marker technology greatly increases the ability to investigate the genetic variation of the collection and offers needed means to manage the collection's contents through identification of redundancy, misclassification, introgression, and sources of unique variability within the collection. Cooperative efforts within the research community to characterize and evaluate the collection, while very effective, could be replicated at an international level with greater impact.

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