Seeing is believing for student’s genebank AI research

11 December 2025

Thanks to a graduate researcher harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI), genetic selection will be even easier for breeders and researchers seeking varieties from the Australian Grains Genebank (AGG) at Horsham SmartFarm.

Mr Nivin Goonesekera, a software engineer and PhD student at Agribio Bundoora, is working on a thesis titled ‘Seeing is believing: Visualising the Australian Grains Genebank’.

Mr Goonesekera is part of Agriculture Victoria’s higher education program and co-supervised by Agriculture Victoria’s Plant Functional Genomics team and the La Trobe University School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences.

Mr Goonesekera said his research has resulted in an AI driven, multi-dimensional search and visualisation tool called Gingerbread which will complement other digital tools in use and increase access to plant genetic resources at the AGG.

‘The AGG currently stores over 190,000 types of seed from more than 150 countries worldwide,’ Mr Goonesekera said.

‘For plant breeders, this enormous and complex collection can be quite challenging and time-consuming to search through.

'Gingerbread will benefit plant breeders who are wanting to identity genetic material best suited for their research.

‘The tool has been coded with Python and uses AI algorithms to provide a 2D representation of the genebank genotype data.

‘Through the client interface, researchers can input criteria and extract a world-map-like view of plant material contained in the genebank,’ he said.

Results from the AGG dataset can be displayed in many kinds of views such as geographical, plant pedigree disease or pesticide resistant traits, and also highlight variety duplicates.

Gingerbread leverages the genetic profiling of the AGG’s collection, which was funded through a $30M strategic partnership between Agriculture Victoria and the Grains Research and Development Corporation, to unlock the potential of AGG resources for Australian grain growers.

Over 50,000 genotypes have already been publicly released by the partnership and can be accessed on the Harvard Dataverse.

Mr Goonesekera intends to contact researchers and breeders to help with Gingerbread’s beta-testing phase early next year.

Learn more about the higher education program, the AGG and the AGG Strategic Partnership at agriculture.vic.gov.au.

Media contact: Anna Ferguson

Phone: 0499 540 475