Novel Data Management System for the African Staple Crop: The Case Study of Yambase

Yam (Dioscorea rotundata) is the preferred staple food in West Africa and elastic demand is constrained by inadequate production and losses in storage. Yambase (https://yambase.org/) is a central datastore for African. Africa-Yam project, which aims to leverage on genetic improvement of two major cultivated yam species which are white yam (D. rotundata), native to West Africa and water yam (D. alata), originated from Asia/Pacific region (http://africayam.org/). Yambase aims to support breeders’ daily activities as a comprehensive information source on phenotypes and genotypes and aims to provide a complete bioinformatics toolset for yam research community. As a central storage for yam phenotyping and genotyping data, yambase provides a common platform to curate germplasm material and phenotypic data across the different institutional partners involved in Africa yam project. The fieldbook app (http://wheatgenetics.org/fieldbook) is interfaced with yambase phenotyping management system. Other breeding tools and aspects covered includes the yam traits ontology dictionary, genotyping data (GBS) management pipeline, pre-nursery and nursery streamline management. Yambase is a globally accessible open source resource. Data viewing, submission and editing are allowed according to the user’s status. All current and future developments are driven by user feedback and available to the public (https://github.com/solgenomics). In this workshop, we will provide an overview of the current tools, available data, and future developments and also highlight challenges with Yambase development.

Key words: Dioscorea Spp, Field book, Open source, Tools, Yam breeding, YamBase