CartograPlant: Bridging genomic, phenotypic, and environmental data to advance plant resilience and eco-evolutionary insight.

Abstract

Climate change is threatening plant health and productivity at all spatial scales, and these impacts are further compounded by the rising incidence of invasive pests and pathogens. Effectively addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive understanding of plant demography as well as the mechanisms and drivers of adaptation. Achieving this understanding requires the integration of physiological, ecological, and genetic datasets. However, such integration is often hindered by disconnected data sources, inconsistent metadata standards, and limited tools to link, analyze, and visualize multi-dimensional datasets in a unified framework. Addressing these hurdles is critical to advancing the understanding of species responses to environmental change and developing informed strategies for conservation, restoration, and adaptive management. CartograPlant (https://cartograplant.org) is a web-based interactive application which facilitates the visualization and analysis of genotypic, phenotypic, and environmental data, as well as associated metadata, from georeferenced individuals. Developed as a Tripal module, CartograPlant addresses a critical gap in biological data integration by enabling users to explore complex eco-evolutionary patterns across space and time. Recent updates have expanded its data sources, improved interoperability, and introduced NextFlow pipelines alongside new tools for the integration and analysis of these data. CartograPlant offers a scaleable, flexible, and continually-updated platform for researchers, conservationists, land managers, and plant breeders to better understand and mitigate the impacts of global change on plant biodiversity, accelerate resilience in breeding programs, and inform data-driven decisions in agriculture and ecosystem management.