Helium: Visualization of Large Scale Plant Pedigrees

TL;DR

Helium is an interactive visualization tool that integrates diverse plant data with large pedigrees, aiding breeders in making informed decisions to improve crop traits and adapt to climate change.

Contribution

The paper introduces Helium, a novel pedigree visualization system tailored for plant breeding, integrating multiple data types with large-scale pedigrees based on expert feedback.

Findings

Helium enables easy integration of various data types with pedigree data.

Users found the abstract pedigree representation effective and satisfactory.

The tool supports exploration of complex plant pedigree data.

Abstract

Background: Plant breeders are utilising an increasingly diverse range of data types in order to identify lines that have desirable characteristics which are suitable to be taken forward in plant breeding programmes. There are a number of key morphological and physiological traits such as disease resistance and yield that are required to be maintained, and improved upon if a commercial variety is to be successful. Computational tools that provide the ability to pull this data together, and integrate with pedigree structure, will enable breeders to make better decisions on which plant lines are used in crossings to meet both critical demands for increased yield/production and adaptation to climate change. Results: We have used a large and unique set of experimental barley (H. vulgare) data to develop a prototype pedigree visualization system and performed a subjective user evaluation with domain experts to guide and direct the development of an interactive pedigree visualization tool which we have called Helium. Conclusions: We show that Helium allows users to easily integrate a number of data types along with large plant pedigrees to offer an integrated environment in which they can explore pedigree data. We have also verified that users were happy with the abstract representation of pedigrees that we have used in our visualization tool.