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New passport data published

New data providers, such as EMBRAPA (Brazil), the Genetic Resources Research Institute (Kenya), the National Genebank of Tunisia and the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory (Philippines), are now sharing almost 250,000 germplasm records on Genesys.
 
Before publishing their passport data on Genesys, our data providers conducted various procedures to ensure their data was ready for publication. For example, the information systems team at EMBRAPA visited their decentralized genebank collections scattered across Brazil to improve Alelo, their internal information system. The National Genebank of Tunisia trained a team of data digitizers to recover passport records kept in hard copies and to input that data into their GRIN-Global database. The documentation team at the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory in the Philippines carried out an inventory and updated the availability of seeds and plants conserved in their genebank.
 
These new additions contribute to understanding the extent of ex situ collections worldwide. Genebank managers, researchers and Genesys users in general can now explore the forages and sesame collection conserved in Kenya; wheat and barley landraces from Tunisia; mung bean accessions conserved in Philippines; and the diversity and extent of plant germplasm conserved in Brazil.

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Access passport data using R: genesysR is a package to access Genesys passport data using R. Download the package here and find how to use it here.
Samples of banana and plantain can now be requested through Genesys: the Bioversity International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre has recently enabled the option to place germplasm requests via Genesys. Samples from other crops such as barley, cassava and potato can be placed as well. Find here the extensive list of crops and genebanks that offer this option.
Improving passport data quality and completeness: Last June, we prepared tailored reports on passport data completeness and quality for 15 genebanks. These reports are guiding genebanks to improve passport data published on Genesys. Please contact helpdesk@genesys-pgr.org for assistance on tools to improve passport data.
DOIs video: We have released a short animated whiteboard video entitled Digital Object Identifiers in Plant Genetic Resources. The video explains what DOIs are and how they can be used in genebanks. Click here to view.
Brazilian data: The article Sharing Brazilian plant germplasm data globally details EMBRAPA's addition of 193,000 accessions to Genesys.
Geo-referencing: Australian Pastures Genebanks is now sharing geo-referenced data for more than 40,000 accessions of tropical and temperate pasture and forage genetic resources. This map on Genesys shows the collecting site of the geo-referenced accessions.

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Downloading Genesys data

Registered users can download Genesys passport data in two different formats: as a XLSX file with all data descriptors (Download MCPD); and as a ZIP file that contains four individual tables (coll.csv, core.csv, geo.csv, names.csv) which share a unique identifier (genesysId column) to ease joins.

Passport data with coordinates can be downloaded as KML files for use in Google Earth and other mapping services.



Please contact helpdesk@genesys-pgr.org for special data requests.