The Cotton Trait Ontology is maintained by http://www.cropontology.org and http://www.cottongen.org

Ontology name: Cotton Trait Ontology

Version: 2.0

Language: EN

Curator: Jing Yu

Institute: Washington State University, United States

Expert group: Lori Hinze, Richard Percy*, Russell Kohel*

Institute: USDA-ARS-CGRU, College Station, Texas, United States (*retired)

Version number (date of submission):

• V2.0 (8/30/2021) - current

• V1.0 (5/20/2019)

Description:

The lack of a common, structured vocabulary to describe cotton phenotypic traits is an obstacle for researchers wanting to understand the work of colleagues as well as for the integration of QTL associated with these traits into CottonGen. Specific trait ontologies enhance the interoperability and effectiveness of data exchange between the data sources which adopt it, by providing standard concepts that are used to describe phenotypes stored in those sources. Here we present a Cotton Trait Ontology (a set of standardized and structured vocabularies for cotton traits) which aims to provide a central location with controlled vocabulary for phenotypic traits to improve discussion and collaboration among research groups within the cotton community. The terms in the Cotton Trait Ontology were developed from trait evaluation data within five germplasm collections from four countries and from QTL-trait association data obtained from over one hundred peer-reviewed publications. The vocabulary was established in 2016 by CottonGen with input from Drs. Lori Hinze, Richard Percy, and Russell Kohel of USDA-ARS, College Station, TX, and thereafter the incremental validation continued as new data was imported into CottonGen. In 2019, the Cotton Trait Ontology (v1) became a part of Crop Ontology. Two years later, a new version (v2) with consolidated and enhanced vocabularies from additional datasets and QTL studies was formed.