(1139-B) Miniaturized, fully automated NEBNext Direct® Genotyping Solution using the Biomek i7 Hybrid Automated Workstation in conjunction with the Echo 525 Acoustic Liquid Handler for marker-assisted breeding

Abstract: The NEBNext Direct® Genotyping Solution delivers cost-effective, high-throughput, NGS-based targeted genotyping for plant and animal applications that allows efficient genotyping of thousands of markers with high target coverage and uniformity. The intrinsic features of the NEBNext Direct® Genotyping Solution facilitate high-throughput sample processing including pre-capture barcoding, pooling of up to 96 samples per capture, and dual barcoding, allowing up to 9,216 samples to be run in parallel on Illumina sequencers. As genotyping for molecular breeding applications require solutions that enable robust and cost-efficient processes to implement at scale, we incorporated the Echo 525 Acoustic Liquid Handler in a fully automated workflow to enable miniaturization of certain reaction volumes and to further reduce the operational costs per sample, while preserving data quality. Here we demonstrate the development and implementation of an automated protocol for the NEBNext Direct® Genotyping Solution on the Biomek i7 Hybrid Automated Workstation including the Echo 525 Acoustic Liquid Handler to address the high throughput demands of marker-assisted plant breeding applications.