Breeding Management System (BMS): A User Perspective

While getting information about the genome is becoming cheaper, the cost of obtaining phenotypic information has maintained or even increased. The number of genomic related hypothesis that researchers want to test is becoming much bigger than the access to phenotypic data that each of those researchers can obtain and combine. In order to overcome this issue, phenotypes from thousands of plots need to be easy to access and well organized. The breeding management system (BMS) can help consolidate, and share large amounts of phenotypic data. With an intuitive and user friendly interface that can be installed locally or in a server, the software provides an easy platform to organize different experiments, manage seed inventory, and upload, download, and share phenotypic data. The program integrates well with electronic data capture systems like fieldbook and has a crop ontology feature that allows the users to clearly choose and define the traits being measured. However, there is still room from improvement and tools for communication with the developers and community development are being put in place to help implement new features that users may need. The scope of this presentation is to show the advantages and disadvantages of this software from the perspective of a quantitative genetics lab, and how the Buckler lab has been able to modify some features to adapt it to its needs in close collaboration with the system developers.