Expanding ecological and evolutionary insights from wild Arabidopsis thaliana accessions

The analytical power of Arabidopsis thaliana genomics has turned its local varieties (accessions) from divergent habitats into important genetic resources. Variant alleles harbored in those accessions are used to identify loci controlling important plant traits with enormous benefits for analytical as well as applied purposes. We argue here that the information derived from Arabidopsis accessions can be further expanded, if a systematic effort for recording the growth conditions of new Arabidopsis accessions is rapidly implemented. The modest and feasible changes in genetic sampling practice that we propose will dramatically increase the quality and quantity of data obtained from Arabidopsis accessions. The broader data set will no longer focus solely on the genetic mechanism within the plant, but will also address the plant's interaction with its environment. We suggest (a) a modified sampling strategy involving sample size and the recording of additional growth conditions (Appendix) and (b) the establishment of a centralized and expandable database to cover all available information regarding the habitats of Arabidopsis accessions.