The plant breeding software, keystone of seed business information

Date:08-28-2018

Researchers and technicians, you are probably using a plant breeding software for your daily activities in breeding, agronomy, analytical, product development and production. You save your information and know-how in the system, so you need powerful tools to collect data, validate the information, take decisions and monitor your activity. Its efficiency, such as any collaborative tool, should rely on the satisfaction of every user and its ability to share information fastly and securely throughout the whole department. The plant breeding software must fulfill three main goals for the breeding department:

• Organize the work along all research activities, and save time at the key steps of the season
• Provide all the tools needed along the breeding process for researchers and technicians to plan, conduct and analyze its studies with decision-making support
• Connect all the actors of the research department to facilitate safe sharing of data and proceedings from the set-up of research objectives to production

Research departments priorities when using plant breeding software

Plant breeding software, the core of vegetal R&D information system

Why integrate several activities in the plant breeding software ?

Breeding work requires many heterogeneous information shared in real time, and coming from the various activities: The plant breeding software must comply with each actor providing friendly interfaces to the benefit of all the breeding activity : For example, thanks to RnDExperience®, when a breeder sends a seed sample to the analytical lab, the laboratory results are directly entered in the database and reachable for the researcher to combine with other sources data (e.g. phenotyping, environment... ), without needing to export any data from a spreadsheet.

A centralized IT system enables a high interoperability between the various data sources: Molecular, genetical, in vivo observations, environmental etc...

Several activities can be integrated in RnDExp® breeding software

How to integrate several activities in the breeding software?

First of all, the structure of the software itself must be able to support a multi-activity configuration:

• Every activity needs its own configuration, specific to the kind of data and tasks used. This is made possible in RnDExp® thanks to a strict separation between the software core and its configuration, and the ability to deploy various configurations on the same core sofware.
• An accurate management of access rights for every user of each activity has to determine which process or data can be accessible.
   

Then bridges can be built between activities, namely transversal processes, where users can share research work efficiently.

The plant breeding software integrates all processes of the breeding department

Example of breeding processes integrated in RnDExp® plant breeding software.

An integrated process management system can bring all the methods and tools required to run a research activity, namely Data Collection, Data Validation and Decision-making.

Let's see what can be done to track, automatize and improve each of the six steps of sample handling.

The vocation of Doriane is to bring a collaborative tool for the multidisciplinary research departments enabling time saving and decision making assistance by integrating in its software suite all the season workflow:

1. Data Collection :

• Assistance in planning field and laboratory evaluations ;

• Monitoring the progress of R&D processes,

• Tools for field work (field maps, labels, field books, etc.) ;

• Mobile data collection assistance (sampling planning, protocols, forms, notices, also from connected measuring devices) ;

2. Data Validation

• Storage and centralization of heterogeneous and voluminous data (phenotypic observations, yield results, molecular sequences, environmental conditions, etc.) ;

• Data Analysis (descriptive statistics, graphs, multivariant analysis, etc.) ;

3. Decision-making

• Reporting and Business Intelligence.

Plant breeding software, the IT system of the whole breeding department

Example of a transversal research information system applied to Plant Breeding.

Fred Royer, CEO and founder, Doriane: "The Plant breeding software must be the integrated nervous system of the R&D department. This configuration brings the best Return on Investment (ROI) on IT system."

Plant breeding software transversality

Most studies on ERP¹ show that integrating with one unified tool different activities bring more return on investment (ROI) than an Information System fragmented with various bridges to maintain. Our company Doriane has installed plant breeding software for vegetal research departments for more than 30 years, and we strongly believe in the benefits of integrated and transversal research information systems that enables to extend the use of the breeding software to further activities.

Choosing an IT partner for the information software of a research department is not an easy task and deserves much attention. One of the fundamental concepts of Doriane’s range is the huge customization power of the tools offered. This concept was dictated by the R&D market, where implementations can vary a great deal from one company to another since scientific priorities depend on the strategic choices of each firm.

In our experience and most of our customers' opinion, a departemental software must be able to adapt to the specificities of research processes, and at the same time rely on a standard core offering security, sustainability and economical maintenance cost over the years.

¹ Read the complete study on ERP benefits (part 1) and its implications on the Indian seed market (part 2): How RRP systems bring resource advantages to Indian seed companies