A plant breeding program needs to be able to store and manage their germplasm. Lines being advanced need to be stored until the next cycle of testing, elite parents need to be maintained for future crosses, and newly developed varieties being readied for release need to be managed as the quantity of seed is built up for commercial distribution. As part of the Feed the Future’s Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement, the IBP worked with the Center of Innovation for Crop Improvement for East and Southern Africa (CICI-ESA) and East African Center of Innovation for Finger Millet and Sorghum (CIFMS) to develop and execute proposals for improving their seed storage facilities and implementing processes for managing their seed inventories. As part of this project, the IBP developed tools for digitally managing seed inventory and automatically linking the data with the BMS.
Following the updates to the seed storage rooms at Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Malawi and National Semiarid Resources Research Institute in Uganda, the IBP led a series of sessions for understanding how to integrate the digital tools with the local work processes and for training local staff on the use of the tools. Initially, on-line sessions were held with both of the centers for innovation and subsequently an intensive, in-person session was conducted at each of the host institutes.
The on-site training provided a comprehensive review of the entire inventory management process. A BMS overview covered the basic concept for germplasm in the BMS, inventory attributes, variables related to inventory management and storage location creation. This was followed by a deep dive into the Inventory Manager starting with the concept of lots and following with details on creating, importing, updating, merging, splitting and closing lots.
Following lots of discussion we moved to the concept of inventory transactions and details of the BMS facilities for initiating, confirming, canceling and exporting transactions.
With these tools in place, the training proceeded to cover the practical aspects of working with inventory in studies including the preparation of seed packets for planting from inventory and managing the creation of new lots at harvest. The GRApp Inventory tool developed as part of this project for integrating seed store data collected with bar-code readers and balances directly into the BMS was highlighted.
Finally, a discussion on good practices for inventory management in a breeding program was held at each institute to summarize how these tools could help support the respective breeding programs in achieving their goals.
In addition to the seed storage and management project outlined above, we continue to work with partners in Africa, from handling shipment logistics of digitisation equipment and consumables to NARS supported by the OneCGIAR Accelerated Breeding Initiative (ABI, formerly Excellence in Breeding), to providing online and in-person training courses on seed inventory management for focus countries of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement (ILCI) Centre of Innovation for Finger Millet and Sorghum (CIFMS) and the ILCI-ESA Centre of Innovation for Crop Improvement- cowpea.