The Enterprise Breeding
System (EBS) was presented at the National Agricultural Research and Extension
Systems (NARES) – International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) breeding
network’s Annual Joint Advancement Meeting for East and Southern Africa (ESA)
on 30 August 2023 at Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. EBS was also among the modern
breeding tools introduced at the Asian Food and Agriculture Cooperation
Initiative’s (AFACI) advancement meeting at the IRRI Headquarters on 08
September 2023.
As part of the NARES-IRRI advancement meeting for ESA, a breeding analytics training session was headed by Dr. Giovanny Covarrubias, the IRRI Breeding Analytics, Data Management, Software Development (BDS) Cluster Lead. The session featured a report from May Ann Sallan, IRRI HQ’s EBS Data Management Lead Specialist, on the extent of EBS usage in IRRI and AfricaRice from March 2022 to August 2023. EBS is poised to improve collaboration among rice researchers in the African region.
Overall, 93% of IRRI breeding teams have used EBS to create their experiments, while a 70% uptake is observed for AfricaRice. Martin Ndomondo, Julien Nduwimana, and Rehema Kwayu were also recognized for creating the most trials and data points in the system.
On the other hand, Ma. Concepcion Lotho, IRRI HQ EBS Data Management Specialist, presented an overview of EBS on the last day of the week-long AFACI programs.
Applications featured in
the Core Breeding domain, as well as the end-to-end genotyping workflow in the
Service Management domain was demonstrated for participants. Questions were
also entertained from prospective users from NARES partners, such as the
Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) and the Bangladesh Rice Research
Institute (BRRI).
The EBS transforms crop breeding by offering a single data management system that digitalizes the breeding process. Adoption efforts are underway as it becomes the sole breeding data management system across CGIAR Research Centers.
