At CGIAR Science Week in Nairobi, the B4T and BR teams connected with breeders, while EBS showcased its transformative role in accelerating data-driven breeding for food security.
The EBS GUS team completed a Train-the-Trainer course for ICARDA and IITA, equipping 14 breeders with advanced EBS skills through hands-on virtual sessions.
The BR team’s EBS poster won top honors at CIMMYT SIW 2025, recognized for innovation, clarity, and strategic relevance by expert and participant votes.
LOS BAÑOS, Philippines — This year’s Breeding Application Programming Interface (BrAPI) Hackathon was hosted by the Rice Breeding Innovations Platform at the International Rice Research Institute Headquarters’ (IRRI HQ) from 2-6 June 2025. The hybrid week-long event was attended by 54 participants from various organizations including Cornell University, National Taiwan University, Texas Tech University, Boyce Thompson Institute, Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT), Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), and IRRI.
Participants include 20 representatives from the Breeding Resources’ (BR) Digital Solutions (DS) unit based in IRRI HQ and CIMMYT. Also present in the hackathon are Ng Eng Hwa (Breeding Resource Services Head), Marko Kärkkäinen (BRS Digital Solutions Operations Lead), James Clevenger (Solutions Engineering & Innovation Lead), Jack Lagare (Solutions Enablement Lead), and Jahzeel Calosa (Solutions Engineering & Innovation Lead for IRRI).
Led and moderated by Peter Selby, BrAPI Project Coordinator, the sessions focused on topics surrounding security and authentication, breeding analytics, gene banks, genotypic data models, time series and repeated measures, AI/ML integration, and breeding cycle use cases.
BRS Lead Ng Eng Hwa (top left), SE & I Lead James Clevenger (bottom left), GUS-General Support Lead Kate Dreher (top right), and Core Breeding Senior Specialist Karen Dela Rosa (bottom right) introduce themselves and their goals at the 2025 BrAPI Hackathon.
The DS team looks forward to enable multi-trial phenotypic analytics to/from EBS and Bioflow, support quality checking of genotypic data to/from EBS and Bioflow, explore EBS-Field Book experimental features including support for time-series and repeated measures, and, finally, begin the integration process for AgPile.
Project goals and community updates presented at the 2025 BrAPI Hackathon.
BrAPI is an open-source solution that enable seamless connections across breeding tools and databases, so that breeders and researchers can easily continue their work from one application to another.
The BrAPI Hackathon is regularly conducted to engage the community of experts and stakeholders who maintain and improve it. It serves as an avenue for ideas and proposals to steer the future of BrAPI.
Words by Stephanie Manrilla. Photos courtesy of IRRI RBI Communications, Ruth Carpio, & Stephanie Manrilla.