A Unified Crop Ontology for Standardizing Phenotypic Data Collection in Bottle Gourd [Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standl.]

Underutilized crops have considerable cultural, culinary, and historical value but lack widespread cultivation or extensive research. With these gaps in commercialization efforts, maximizing available information is crucial for breeding adapted and improved cultivars, conserving genetic resources, and, ultimately, promoting broader adoption. Crop ontologies provide a framework for describing a crop’s relevant attributes by standardizing data collection protocols across various research endeavors. These ontologies enhance the value of the broader pool of genetic resources and facilitate greater interoperability among collaborative conservation and improvement efforts. To maximize impact, a crop ontology should prioritize the inclusion of traits from markets, cultures, and regions with connections to the given crop. The bottle gourd [ Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standl.] is an underutilized, under-researched crop originating in Africa, but has regional significance across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. We developed a crop ontology for bottle gourds via literature reviews using 35 previous characterization studies from 10 countries, related cucurbit ontologies, and multisite and multiyear collaborative phenotyping efforts with Kasetsart University (Thailand), the US Department of Agriculture National Plant Germplasm System (United States), Cornell University (United States), and the University of Erciyes Melikgazi Kayseri-Türkiye (Turkey). The crop ontology emphasizes traits important for localized use and includes 300 traits that describe vegetative, floral, fruit, and seed phenotypes critical to horticultural variation and culturally diverse uses. Furthermore, our bottle gourd ontology provides a foundation for future conservation and improvement efforts, as well as a framework for creating ontologies that could be applied to other underutilized crops.