A group of GCP scientists and researchers involved in the development of the configurable breeding workflow system of the Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) meet in San Diego, California, USA, from 12–14 January for the workshop, to discuss ways and means to develop tools in a coordinated and cohesive way to make the platform a reality.

The process of tools development and their assembly into various breeding applications will require intense collaboration between teams of researchers, developers, programmers (including user interface specialists), and users.

The workshop proposes to build consensus on team composition and development responsibility for the different tools and corresponding breeding applications. Participants will also review draft tool functionality documentation, flow prototypes and timelines for tool delivery and agree on common principles and parameters for the development of functional prototypes to ensure their seamless integration into the iPlant Collaborative cyber infrastructure that shall host the platform.

The signing of the MoU between iPlant and GCP will take place during the workshop. Under the MoU, iPlant will collaborate with GCP in the development of the platform including hosting a team of GCP software engineers. See vacancy announcements for these positions.

Targeted for priority development are tools for a Breeding Management System; tools for a Field Trial Management System including an Integrated Breeding Fieldbook; and tools for a Decision Support System including a Molecular Breeding Design Tool, a Cross Prediction Tool and a tool for marker-assisted recurrent selection (MARS).