By helpdesk@genesys-pgr.org
22 February 2021

Genesys is the world’s largest portal to information about crop diversity conserved in genebanks. 

This site makes it easy for all institutes with collections of crop diversity to make their data publicly available. It then allows breeders and other genebank users to quickly search for crop samples located in over 500 collections around the globe. It contains more than 4 million genebank accessions, which is around half of the estimated total number in the world.

Many of the seeds (and other types of planting material) whose data is shared through Genesys are available on request from their holding genebank. When this is the case, Genesys relays requests for material to the genebank. Most genebanks distribute small amounts only for research and breeding purposes, and access is subject to legal and phytosanitary conditions.

For more information on using Genesys, see our frequently asked questions and tutorials.

Timeline of Genesys

2001    The United Nations adopts the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The International Treaty acknowledges the need to establish a system for sharing genetic information among breeders, farmers and researchers.

2008    Bioversity International, the Secretariat of the International Treaty and the Crop Trust begin developing Genesys, supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

2011    The first Genesys portal launches, including information from three of the world’s largest genebank networks: ECPGR, CGIAR and USDA.

2012    A task force – later to become the Genesys Advisory Committee – recommends that the Crop Trust become the legal entity responsible for the development of Genesys.

2015    A major new version of Genesys establishes a system for partner institutes to make their own continuous updates.

Today    Users and data providers continue to join the Genesys community, bringing more accession information to more people around the world.

Tomorrow    Development of the Genesys portal continues at the Crop Trust. Future goals include adding information from more data providers, enhancing search functionality, and making it easier to use. You are the most crucial contributor to the future development of the system, and we welcome your input at helpdesk@genesys-pgr.org.

Acknowledgement

	Genesys is managed by the Crop Trust.
	Genesys was supported by CGIAR donors via the Genebank Platform from 2013 to 2021. We thank all donors who supported this work through their contributions to the CGIAR Fund.
	Work on the Genesys Catalog of Phenotypic Datasets was made possible thanks to a kind contribution from the Federal Republic of Germany.
	The publication of accession data from EMBRAPA, Brazil, was one of the activities of the Crop Wild Relatives Project, which was supported by the Government of Norway from 2011 to 2021.