Update on the Development and Deployment of the Breeding Management System

The Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) – www.integratedbreeding.net – is a comprehensive source for best practices in plant breeding, where registered users can find tools, services, capacity development and community resources. At the core of this offer is the IBP Breeding Management System (BMS), a software suite of integrated applications that facilitates the conduct of typical, modern plant breeding activities. The BMS contains a database that manages data associated with plant breeding, including pedigree information, seed inventory, phenotype and genotype data, and comes preloaded with trait, location and breeding method ontologies. Over the last year, changes have been brought to the architecture of the system for the development of a web-based version (BMS v4). Thanks to improved concurrency, translation and system performance, the BMS can now comfortably support 10-20+ concurrent users, as well as trials of up to 500 entries in 200 sites. Feature improvements also include an improved seed inventory system, support for an expanded set of handheld devices, import of custom field designs, a better ontology management system, and more efficient historical data management capabilities. Building on the robust stand-alone version released in February 2015 (v3.0.8), and on the upcoming public release of the web version (v4), the IBP team and its Regional Hubs are now actively deploying the BMS in various national breeding programs. It is also being deployed at several CGIAR Centers including CIMMYT, ICRISAT, IITA and Africa Rice. The BMS is accessible to both public and private breeding programs.