Please note this course was postponed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and will take place virtually in 2021.

This course will introduce crop biologists to methods and approaches for analysing crop genomics data for genotyping. During the course participants will learn about genotyping experimental design, variant calling, comparative genomics using Ensembl, analyse variation data with Ensembl Variant Effect Predictor and the European Variation Archive and explore concepts of genome wide association studies (GWAS).  The content will explain how to make use of existing public data, retrieve, submit and share your data with the community.

It will also provide training on using R in genomics applications for crop genotyping. Trainers will cover the basics of diversity analysis using R, before analyzing various genomes to assess diversity. This will include hierarchical clustering, correlating genomic data with geographic and phenotypic information and investigating gene-phenotype relationships and microsatellites. This course will use genomic data of wheat, maize and potato as training datasets throughout the week. The course will be delivered through a combination of hands-on training sessions and lectures.

Please note: The course will use genomic data from crop plant species throughout the week. It will not explore in detail methods for assembling genomes.