A Gateway to Plant Genetic Resources Utilization

The world is faced with the need to increase crop productivity, develop cultivars that are better adapted to face environmental and biological constraints, and meet the needs of local communities. To meet these challenges farmers and breeders must have access to a wide range of plant genetic resources together with the essential information about the traits they possess that facilitate their utilization. Accurate characterization and evaluation data promote utilization, especially if it is available in an easily usable or standard format. Bioversity International (Bioversity) aims to stimulate the characterization and evaluation of germplasm collections by providing uniform standards for the description and exchange of information on plants. The CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) centres along with crop research institutes and networks have collaborated with Bioversity in the production of standards or 'descriptors'. Crop standards are an important tool that permits the international community to find and exchange information in a 'common' language. These standards have been adopted by the GCP (Generation Challenge Programme) Ontology Consortium, FAO WIEWS, EURISCO (the European Plant Genetic Resources Catalogue), CGIAR centres and are also being promoted by the Crop Genebank Knowledge Base and GRIN. These data standards constitute the backbone of the GENESYS global portal for access to information on plant genetic resources. GENESYS heralds a new paradigm for access to and use of these resources. GENESYS 1.0 was released in May 2011 following nearly three years of development by Bioversity on behalf of the CGIAR System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP) and in partnership with the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and the Global Crop Diversity Trust. It brings together the passport data from three of the major genebank information networks - SINGER (the CGIAR System-wide Information Network for Genetic Resources), EURISCO and GRIN, the USDA system which added further value through the inclusion of characterization and evaluation data.