David Muruu, a research associate for plant breeding and data management of The Alliance of Bioversity and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture’s (CIAT) tropical forages program, was the main beneficiary of the KEP. He was joined by senior research coordinator, Luis Hernández.
The KEP is a Breeding and Research Services (BRS) initiative that grants funding for on-site collaboration between a mentor and a participant. It concluded the CIAT-Forage programs’ EBS adoption, which started in July 2024. The KEP aimed to collect CIAT-Forage program’s requirements, including their harvest use cases and breeding processes, discuss breeding analytics tools and methodologies, and explore other required services such as shipment and inventory management.
The EBS adoption lead, May Ann Sallan, spearheaded key EBS topics. Others sessions were led by the EBS IRRI Data Management Team consisting of Ma. Concepcion Lotho, Ma. Consuelo Parducho, and Michael Reyes, the EBS Communication Team led by Ruth Carpio, and some of the developers from the Core Breeding domain. The Breeding Analytics (BA) team led by Alaine Gulles facilitated the workshops for the BA tools and Bioflow.
Muruu and Hernández also presented their crops’ breeding scheme and use cases. This ensured that the EBS team is oriented on the required adjustments on key EBS configurations. This guarantees that forage crops are fully accommodated in the system. To further enrich the sessions, Muruu and Hernández were also toured inside IRRI HQ’s Genebank, Plant Growth Facility, and the Speed Breeding Facility.
Prior to the on-site KEP, a train-the-trainer program was also conducted by the EBS Global User Support team on 15-26 July 2024 for Muruu and other data managers. This two-week online program provided demonstrations of the tools found in the Core Breeding and Breeding Analytics domains.
Additionally, an end user training for 14 CIAT breeders and researchers was held on 18-22 November 2024 to introduce EBS and its tools. Mijail Javier, EBS Regional Technical Support Manager, led this training with Muruu.
The KEP is an initiative led by Stefan Einarson, BRS Capacity Development lead, and Edie Paul, former lead for Digital Solutions Adoption and Change. The overall aim of the program is to create a conducive setup for the transfer of relevant knowledge and skills to requesting research centers.
The tropical forages are the first CIAT programs to adopt EBS. In 2023, CGIAR endorsed EBS as its preferred breeding data management system.
EBS transforms crop breeding by offering a single data management system that digitalizes the breeding process. As a final step, key performance indicators were established to assess the progress of EBS usage and activities over the next three months.
