2018 ASHS Annual Conference

Plant breeding, horticultural, and genetics research are inherently data-driven enterprises. Typical experiments and breeding nurseries can contain thousands of unique entries and programs will often evaluate tens of thousands of plots or plants each year. Due to temporal and economic limitations, many phenotypes that could prove useful for selection are neglected or collected only on a subset of lines. To operate a modern breeding program efficiently, electronic data capture and management is essential. Many research programs, however, continue to operate by scribing and transcribing much, if not all, of their data. This creates a heavy burden on human resources, decreases data integrity, and limits future utilization of data. We have developed several open-source apps to increase the speed and robustness of data collection in plant breeding programs. All of our apps run on consumer-grade Android phones and tablets, thereby decreasing the cost to breeders and creating a viable solution for research programs around the world. In this presentation, we will briefly introduce our collection of apps that are relevant to specialty crop phenotype data collection but focus on Field Book, an app for field and greenhouse data collection and highlight improvements made following input from specialty crop breeders through the NRSP10 project.