More data, a strengthened platform and a wider outreach

More data

As we cross the halfway mark of 2025, more than 70% of accessions in Genesys have been refreshed at least once this year.

Five evaluation subsets are now live: drought- and salinity-tolerant foxtail millet from WorldVeg and ICRISAT; a suite of cassava accessions exhibiting resistance to Cassava Brown Streak Disease from CIAT; and new core collections of okra and amaranth. Complementing these are 26 searchable trait datasets, covering 20 crops, and contributed by ICRISAT, IITA, ILRI, WorldVeg, CIP and CSIR-PGRRI Ghana.

Forty three partners of the Crop Trust’s BOLD Project are regenerating seeds and ensuring their long-term safekeeping by backing them up at a second genebank and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. This year, fifteen partners across thirteen countries backed up seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and the passport data of these accessions is now available in Genesys.

The dedicated page for these genebanks provides easier access to this data. You can also access the information about accessions conserved in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault directly on its seed portal.

The BOLD project is also working with 15 national genebanks across Africa, Asia, and Latin America to bolster their capacity in managing, documenting, conserving, and safety duplicating crop diversity. These genebanks are upgrading their IT infrastructure, adopting GGCE for internal data management, and making 100% of their accessions available on Genesys.

So far this year, the national genebanks of Azerbaijan, Cuba, and Morocco uploaded passport data for 22,455 accessions. Here’s a look at their progress so far:

Make sure to check out the page dedicated to this group of partners!

Embedded Genesys Gains Ground

The national genebanks of Ghana, Uganda, and Kenya have each rolled out Embedded Genesys instances in the first six months of this year, allowing their national collections to appear in local branding on their institute’s websites while still synchronizing with Genesys. Requests for germplasm are enabled on these instances, so researchers and breeders can order samples directly on the genebanks’ websites, extending each collection’s reach.

Strengthening the Platform

March brought the first Genesys Advisory Committee meeting of the year, where members reviewed progress and discussed priorities for the year.

Genesys signed a data-provider agreement with INIA Uruguay, whose collection has already been test-uploaded onto our staging environment. Conversations are under way with additional national genebanks that are eager to publish through either the main portal or Embedded Genesys.

Towards the end of May, we moved Genesys from cloud servers to new dedicated hardware servers. This change has already resulted in faster loading times and better overall performance. As a result of this move, we’re getting 8 times the memory and 24 times processing power for roughly the same price!

Between 9 April and 10 June we ran a user survey to understand how researchers, curators, and breeders are interacting with the platform. Preliminary analysis is already surfacing feature requests; a full report will be shared in the third quarter.

Training and Outreach

Building capacity remains central to our mission. In March and June we hosted two webinars: one on March 5, titled How to Use Genesys open to the public, and the other on June 26, titled From Bean to Browser: Genesys for Coffee Collections, tailored to genebanks that conserve coffee.

We also presented Genesys during the ECPGR webinar on June 23, titled Eggplant and Capsicum Global Conservation Strategies attended by the working groups on eggplant and capsicum, and at the Wheat Initiative’s Expert Working Group meeting on June 2, 2025.

Collaboration extends beyond virtual events: in May, the Australian Grains Genebank team spent a week at our Bonn office to sketch the roadmap for integrating their GenoLink platform, further streamlining exchange on PGRFA information. Our team will visit the genebank in Australia later this month to carry out the next steps of this integration.

The Crop Trust is developing a course on genebank data management that includes modules on both the Genesys and GGCE.

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The Crop Trust is covering the full cost of running Genesys, ensuring continued, stable support for the platform. This is possible thanks to the Crop Trust Endowment Fund and we express our sincere gratitude to its donors!

We hope you enjoy this summary of our activities in the first half of 2025, and stay tuned for more updates in the next few months!

Australian Grains Genebank

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