ICIS - crop information for breeders and crop scientists


.  


The International Crop Information System (ICIS) is a generic crop information system to manage germplasm pedigrees and associated experimental data. ICIS is a collection of databases (public and private), and associated query tools to assist the bioinformatics needs in plant breeding programs. At present information related to the cultivars and data from field tests is available from these three crop databases.

Passport and phenotypic data on germplasm and breeding lines are available from worldwide sources in various electronic formats.  The ICIS database system collated these data into a single format to enable strategic interrogation, thus to make the best use of data for effective germplasm use and enhancement.
ICIS provides integrated management of global information on genetic resources and crop cultivars. This includes germplasm pedigrees, field evaluations, structural and functional genomic data (with links to external plant databases) and environmental (GIS) data.

ICIS allows biologists to manage local data and to query and view these data fully integrated with global public information.
Pedigree management automatically links new germplasm to existing germplasm, including characterization and evaluation (C&E) data. These C&E data include full documention and annotation with controlled vocabularies, on properties or traits, scales, and methods. Integrative queries are possible.

ICIS development is led by the IRRI-CIMMYT Crop Research Informatics Laboratory (CRIL) team.
On the freely accessible ICISwiki pages display elaborate and updated information on the ICIS management, facilities, progress and workshops of the ICIS facilities, databases and portals is available.
Several ICIS applications, in various stages of development, can be found on the ICIS Cropforge pages.

As part of ICIS, the international crop information system, also the following applications can be downloaded from the CropForge ICIS pages: Validation tool, System Diagnostic Tool, ICISworkbook, ICIS Retriever, GEMS tool and the latest, released October 2009, the Phenotyping Wizard.

At present ICIS is implemented for wheat, rice and maize. 


For the other GCP mandate crops  - barley, cotton, potato, maize, chick pea, cow pea, sugar cane and sweet potato - the ICIS implementations are under construction.

reference:
Portugal A, Balachandra R, Metz T, Bruskiewich R, McLaren G. 2007. International crop information system for germplasm data management. Methods Mol Biol. 406:459-71.

.  

back
back to the GCP bioinformatics portal page

  

GCP Bioinformatics
and Biometrics