In 2001 the United Nations adopted the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The Treaty acknowledges the need to establish a system for sharing genetic information among breeders, farmers and researchers.
Genesys development started in 2008 by Bioversity International, the Secretariat of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, supported by a grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The first Genesys portal was launched in 2011, including information on collections from three of the world’s largest genebank databases and networks: EURISCO, CGIAR and USDA NPGS. The genebank accessions in these collections alone constitute around a third of the worldwide total.
In 2012, a task force – later to become the Genesys Advisory Committee – recommended that the Crop Trust become the legal entity responsible for the development of Genesys. After three years of development, the updated Genesys portal was published to allow for continuous updates from partner institutes.
Since then, users and data providers have continued to join the Genesys community, bringing more accession information to more people around the world.
Development of the Genesys portal continues. Future goals include adding information from more data providers, enhancing search functionality, and expanding the environmental data available, all things that our stakeholders have already identified. The user of the information in Genesys is the most crucial contributor to the future development of the system. We welcome your input.
You can reach us at helpdesk@genesys-pgr.org with your Comments and Feedback!