Using Field Book App and Bims in GDR for Peach Breeding

Plant breeding programs generate and evaluate thousands of plants to find the best plant types to become new improved cultivars. A typical breeding program produces hundreds of thousands of phenotypic data points in a given year. Inefficient and poor handling of this data decreases the genetic gain of the breeding program, consequently reducing its efficiency. While data handling has been a limiting area for breeding programs in the past, advances in computing have provided simple solutions that can address the needs of plant breeding programs. The Genome Database for Rosaceae (GDR) is supporting development of the Field Book App, an open-source software for phones and tablets, which allows researchers to replace hard-copy field books, thus alleviating the possibility of transcription errors while providing faster access to the collected data. The peach breeding program at Clemson University is using the Field Book app to collect data on field research plots. Field Book data input is customized for a large number of data types including numeric, percentage, categorical, multi-categorical, date, Boolean, text, counter, rust score, photo, and audio. These data types allow the user to create custom traits to suit their own personal needs. GDR is developing a Breeding Information Management System (BIMS) that allows users to upload and manage data collected with the Field Book app directly to their program specific breeding database. Experience with and versatility of the Field Book app and customized BIMS in a peach breeding program are discussed along with further development plans.