Genomic data of some species is publicly available but stored in a multitude of largely disconnected online databases, and only parts are known to people. Data for many species is being actively generated, and a significant amount is stored in herbaria, museums and other organisational repositories that have limited discoverability.
To realise the vision where genomic breeding approaches are applied widely across agriculture and conservation, data from as many Australian-relevant species as possible needs to be findable and combinable for subsequent analyses.
The overall goal of the project was to establish the critical infrastructure to make genomics data available and discoverable. For genomic approaches to be applied widely across agriculture and biodiversity in Australia, this infrastructure needs to:
To this end, the project has established the Australian Reference Genome Atlas (ARGA) platform.
Genetic information has a substantial impact on improving conservation outcomes by providing answers to important questions on species populations recovery and rebound after major catastrophic events.
ARGA locates and aggregates descriptions of all relevant genomic data – such as genome assemblies, genome annotations, barcodes, raw data and other omic data – to create tools that allow conservation managers to protect species and their genetic diversity. These tools enable searching across these genomic data based on a variety of contextual aspects around the organism, such as:
Use the Australian Reference Genome Atlas (ARGA).
ARGA’s Genome tracker, a dashboard that tracks progress towards sequencing the genomes of all of Australia’s biodiversity species, was launched in July 2025. The dashboard reveals that only 2 per cent of Australia’s known and catalogued species have had their genome sequenced at least once.
Also read the following journal articles from the project:
