We are continuing to enrich the content of MGIS as well as adding new features for end users.

The latest release includes additional Passport Data from new partners who are signatory of the MGIS Data sharing Agreement (DSA). We would like to thank Bangladesh through the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Cambodia through the Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) and Malaysia through the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) for their confidence in providing their accession information.

We have now 24 collections providing data to MGIS for a total of 4917 accessions.

At the same time, we have updated the Passport Data of the Bioversity International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre (ITC) in Belgium, the Bureau of Plant Industry collection in Philippines (BPI), and the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Papua New Guinea.

Bioversity International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre collection

The accessions of the Bioversity International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre collection now include the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for each accession.

DOIs are used as Permanent Unique Identifiers (PUID) in the context of the Global Information System (GLIS) of Article 17 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).

The need for PUIDs emerged as a critical step to unambiguously and permanently identify plant genetic resources for food and agriculture being exchanged among organizations. The Secretariat of the International Treaty provides them free-of-charge for the entire PGRFA community participating in the Global Information System. More information is available here: http://www.fao.org/plant-treaty/areas-of-work/global-information-system/faq/en/.

Each collection from the country signatories of the ITPGRFA can apply to have DOIs for their accessions. To do so, contact your country representative. We will be happy to help you.

Two videos on DOIs and how helpful they can be in the world of crop research are found below.

National Agricultural Research Institute collection

For this collection in Papua New Guinea, the current dataset contains the Passport Data of accessions collected during a collecting mission organised in autonomous province of Bougainville in October 2016. You can download the report HERE.

New features:

An updated version of GIGWA tool as already mentioned in February news:

The web interface for the management of SNP markers was upgraded with the version 2 of GIGWA. This new interface is faster and should offer a better user experience (https://www.crop-diversity.org/mgis/gigwa). We thank Guilhem Sempéré (CIRAD) for a fruitful collaboration on this projet.

An updated version of the Breeding API.

The Breeding API (BrAPI) have also been updated to implement new methods. It allows other information system to facilitate query and integration of MGIS data into their web site. You can query it online by going to this page: https://www.crop-diversity.org/mgis/brapi/query and an overview of the API is accessible here https://www.crop-diversity.org/mgis/brapi/overview.

As usual, comments and remarks are welcome.

Happy browsing, the MGIS Team.