A total of 26 breeders and other research collaborators from the Department of Agriculture-Regional Field Offices, Philippine Rice Research Institute-Central Experiment Station, University of the Philippines Los Baños, and University of Visayas, engaged in lectures and simulation activities on EBS. The collaborators were trained under OneRice PH program led by Dr. Mary Jean Du, Regional Breeding Lead for Product Development & Varietal Replacement (PDVR) unit, Southeast Asia.
The first training day, facilitated by EBS Data Management (DM) Group, started with an overview of EBS, including its concepts, workflows, dashboard, and basic navigation. After that, the data managers demonstrated how to prepare and save trait lists, manage and download data collection documents, upload and quality-check collected data. They also introduced FieldBook, the recommended mobile application for data collection, and trained them on navigating the app before using it during field simulations. Activities were given to evaluate their knowledge of the tools and workflows.
On the second day, the collaborators practiced using the FieldBook app during the data collection field simulation in one of the rice fields at IRRI. They collected sample rice data from their assigned plots and recorded them in the app, helped by data managers. Then, the participants uploaded their collected data to the app.
Before the session ended, collaborators were also encouraged to upload real data from their past experiments in the production instance to kickstart their use of EBS.
At the last day, the data managers discussed the various EBS support resources available, such as EBS Service Desk, user guides, and release notes among others. After that, the data managers and collaborators discussed key performance indicators to evaluate their system use. Both parties agreed that the collaborators should manage at least 10 occurrences in EBS by March 2024.
The OneRicePH team closed the session with a meeting to discuss plans for the next planting season and incorporating EBS in their current workflow.
The OneRice PH Group and Data Management Group plan to hold another training for the next batch of collaborators in 2024. This is part of the plan of the OneRice PH Team to use digitalized tools for their data collection.
