Breeding Management System (II.): Managing Breeding Data in the Cloud

The Breeding Management System (BMS) is an integrated suite of informatics tools for the facilitation of logistics, data management, analysis and decision support in any modern breeding program. It is developed in collaboration with several breeding projects by the Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP), a project of the CGIAR.

In 2015 the IBP took on the challenge of converting the BMS stand-alone version to an enterprise, multi-user system to support institutions and distributed breeding programs. Version 4 was released in November 2016 and incorporates the requirements of transaction handling, concurrency management and load robustness for a multi-user system. It also has user administration features, and role management infrastructure.

BMS v4 now handles the crossing process through crossing nurseries either using the cross design tool or a crossing fieldbook. It supports customized naming conventions as well as grouping and coding for advanced lines and repeated hybrids. Custom trial designs can be imported into the trial manager and germplasm advancement is available from the trial manager. The complete cycle of seed inventory management from importing stocks, to withdrawal, packaging and inventory update is now available.

An on-line user manual has been produced with contextual links inserted into the user interface, and tutorial documents are available for workshop style training or self learning protocols.

Enhancements to BMS v4 are planned for 2017 and beyond based on user feedback from the stand-alone version as well as institutional requirements identified by larger breeding programs. These will be managed through an agile development, testing and release.