Managing Phenotypic Data through the IBP's Breeding Management System

The Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) of the CGIAR Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) provides information, analytical tools and related services to plant breeders to design and conduct modern breeding programs. The Breeding Management System (BMS) is a suite of informatics tools to facilitate plant breeding which can be downloaded from the Integrated Breeding Portal.

The BMS manages germplasm, phenotype and genotype information for breeding programs through an integrated, modular database system, the Integrated Breeding Database. The phenotyping module is based on a data model which captures all aspects of agricultural field experimentation and is implemented through the CHADO Natural Diversity Schema. The schema is customized through an ontology of field research concepts and data integration is supported via a flexible trait ontology for each crop. The phenotyping data module interacts with the other data modules and with browser-based tools for managing nurseries and trials in any breeding program. A statistical workflow system accesses the module for analysis of phenotyping data and storage of analysis results.

Access to the Phenotyping data module as well as the other modules of the Integrated Breeding Database is via a web services middleware layer. It will be possible for particular implementations of the BMS to expose the web service layer to allow external interaction with the IBDB and support third party analysis and decision support tools.