The Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre (arabidopsis.info)

The increasing demands of a growing, prosperous world for improved agricultural products including food, fibre and fuel, intensifies the need for an extensive understanding of the basic biology and ecology of plants. Arabidopsis is the most widely used model system to study plant biology and has delivered numerous breakthroughs in the understanding of plant and basic biological processes.

The Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre (NASC) is a National and International Capability Resource that has been running successfully for 25 years. From small beginnings with only 200 seed stocks in 1991, NASC now has over a million stocks servicing a vigorous worldwide Arabidopsis community in collaboration with our sister centre ABRC in the USA. Stocks arrive as tens of thousands of seed donations every year from all over the academic world and are preserved in specialist facilities dedicated to long-term storage and conservation. Our technicians receive these donations, store and regenerate low volume donations and process orders placed through our user-friendly on-line catalogue.

The NASC resource is widely used and appreciated globally - as shown by our distribution statistics: More than 50,000 individual stocks sent per year over the last 9 years, and more than 100,000 individual stocks per year for the last 3 years. In the most recent 2015-16 period we sent over 180,000 total seed tubes worldwide in one single year.

Our users extend from applied crop scientists through model organism researchers to computational systems biologists. We are referenced in a very large number of publications as an underpinning resource for plant sciences, and our job is to help scientists to receive essential arabidopsis materials in a very cost effective, straightforward, consistent and efficient manner. We also have a strong track record and positive international partnerships with the US stock centre (ABRC), the US Arabidopsis Informatics Portal (Araport) and The Arabidopsis Informatics Resource (TAIR).

For nearly 20 years (since 1998) we have charged our users a nominal fee per stock to demonstrate both willingness and ability to supplement our grant from cost recovery income. This income has been used to employ temporary workers within NASC to (more than) match total staff numbers funded by the BBSRC. It means that our BBSRC funding is effectively subsidised for UK users by our foreign customers. In this proposal we will be significantly increasing that infrastructure subsidy in response to increased and sustained user numbers in Asia.

For the first time in our history, this proposal covers both the informatics of the catalogue (e.g. germplasm curation and data distribution) as well as the physical distribution resource and would ensure continuity and stability of both physical and germplasm data resources for the European Arabidopsis community (and beyond).

Primary objective : to continue and maintain informatic operations for our very busy (continually expanding and extending) germplasm distribution centre.

Secondary objective : to use current state of the art integration technologies to stay at the forefront of progress in the international arabidopsis resource community at a time of considerable dynamic change in the US provision.

The Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre (NASC) is a National and International Capability Resource that has been running successfully for 25 years. From small beginnings with only 200 seed stocks in 1991, NASC now has over a million stocks servicing a vigorous worldwide Arabidopsis community in collaboration with our sister centre ABRC in the USA. Stocks arrive as tens of thousands of seed donations every year from all over the academic world and are preserved in specialist facilities dedicated to long-term storage and conservation. Our technicians receive these donations, store and regenerate low volume donations and process orders placed through our user-friendly on-line catalogue.

The NASC resource is widely used and appreciated globally - as shown by our distribution statistics. In the most recent 2015-16 period we sent over 180,000 total seed tubes worldwide in one single year.

Our users extend from applied crop scientists to computational systems biologists. We are referenced in a very large number of publications as an underpinning resource for plant sciences, and our job is to help scientists to receive essential arabidopsis materials in a very cost effective, straightforward, consistent and efficient manner. We also have a strong track record and positive international partnerships with ABRC, Araport and TAIR.

Since 1998 we have complemented grant income by cost recovery, this entailed charging per item to demonstrate sufficient user numbers for partial sustainability. This income employs temporary workers within NASC outnumbering total staff numbers funded by the BBSRC. All consumables, equipment, service contracts and travel are also supported by our overseas customer charges. In this proposal we will be significantly increasing that infrastructure subsidy in response to increased and sustained user numbers in Asia.

This proposal covers both the informatics and physical distribution resource at NASC

The increasing demands of a growing, prosperous world for improved agricultural products including food, fibre and fuel, intensifies the need for an extensive understanding of the basic biology and ecology of plants. Arabidopsis is the most widely used model system to study plant biology and has delivered numerous breakthroughs in the understanding of plant and basic biological processes.

In the past 50 yrs, over 54,000 Arabidopsis papers have been published and in turn cited by more than 15,000 non-Arabidopsis-focused papers (Provart, N. J. et al. [2015]. New Phytologist, 50 years of Arabidopsis research: highlights and future directions).

Knowledge gained from studies in Arabidopsis serves to advance our understanding of other plant species, particularly crop species, and thus translates into new or improved plant products and increased agricultural productivity. Arabidopsis has underpinned the genomic revolution in plant science and represents the template on which other plant and crop genomes are annotated and assessed. Arabidopsis data is key to modern crop science and through that to food security and quality of life.

NASC impacts to academia, commerce, and education through direct support with actual physical materials; and data for those materials. We impact to policy makers as an example and precedent for open data and materials sharing, and by evangelical promotion of standards and open-data access. Making research outputs public is our primary deliverable. Our objectives are to maintain, curate, and promote our catalogue of resources widely and openly.

All European plant research groups requiring Arabidopsis stocks are obliged to use NASC (All American users are obliged to use ABRC), but thousands of non-Europeans access our resource - particularly from Asia (notably China).

NASC's services are equally available to Universities, institutes, companies and international users through simple, intuitive interfaces. Distribution abroad requires the same infrastructure as a purely UK resource but adds value by encouraging international donation of stocks and helping to consolidate the Arabidopsis and wider plant Community.

We have also been useful to policy makers and marketing units through our inclusion in BBSRC publications which generate impact through their utilisation both by science policy makers and strategic users:

1. The current BBSRC Data Sharing Policy documentation holds NASC up as an example of good practice.

2. The 2009 BBSRC Bioscience Resources for Food Security pamphlet specifically flagged NASC as a key collection seed resource and supporting the UK Food Security priority.

3. We were also the sole subject of a 5-page 2015 BBSRC 'impact evidence report': "NASC stocks underpin the UK's world-leading plant science research, and have done so since the NASC was founded in 1990."

Our impact is therefore both indirect, enabling other researchers to pursue third party impact, but also direct in that we substantially strengthen and promote arabidopsis as an efficient and actively sharing community.