Historical phenotypic data from seven decades of seed regeneration in a wheat ex situ collection

Genebanks are valuable sources of genetic diversity, which can help to cope with future problems of global food security caused by a continuously growing population, stagnating yields and climate change. However, the scarcity of phenotypic and genotypic characterization of genebank accessions severely restricts their use in plant breeding. To warrant the seed integrity of individual accessions during periodical regeneration cycles in the field phenotypic characterizations are performed. This study provides non-orthogonal historical data of 12,754 spring and winter wheat accessions characterized for flowering time, plant height, and thousand grain weight during 70 years of seed regeneration at the German genebank. Supported by historical weather observations outliers were removed following a previously described quality assessment pipeline. In this way, ready-to-use processed phenotypic data across regeneration years were generated and further validated. We encourage international and national genebanks to increase their efforts to transform into bio-digital resource centers. A first important step could consist in unlocking their historical data treasures that allows an educated choice of accessions by scientists and breeders.