The Breeding Management System (BMS), developed by the Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP), is a suite of tools designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of plant breeding. BMS covers all stages of the breeding process, with the emphasis on germplasm management and ontology-harmonized phenotyping (i.e. with the Crop Ontology). It also features analytics and decision-support tools. With its focus on interoperability, BMS integrates smoothly with BrAPI, facilitating easy connections with a broad array of complementary tools and databases. Notably, the BMS is often deployed together with Gigwa to fulfill the genotyping data management needs of BMS users.
The brapi-sync tool, a significant component of BMS’s BrAPI capabilities, was developed by the IBP and released as a BrAPP for community use. Brapi-sync is designed to enhance collaboration among partner institutes within a network such as Innovation and Plant Breeding in West Africa (IAVAO). The tool enables the sharing of germplasm and trial metadata across BrAPI-enabled systems. It helps overcome traditional barriers to collaboration, ensuring data that was once isolated within specific programs or platforms can now be easily shared, integrated, and synchronized.
Additionally, brapi-sync improves data management by maintaining links to the original source of each entity it transmits. This retains the original context of the data and establishes a traceability mechanism for accurate data source attribution and verification. Such practices are crucial for maintaining data integrity and fostering trust among collaborative partners, ensuring access to accurate, reliable, and current information.