Field Book-Mobile App for Plant Genetic Resources Management

Digitalization is the process of converting information into a digital format. Digital India, launched in 2015, aims towards the promotion of digital literacy and creation of digital infrastructure for empowering rural communities. Considering the need of digitalization and handling of huge data, a mobile based application technology for data collection named Field book has been developed by Kansas State University (KSU), United States of America and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), Mexico. Such app could be very useful to collect data related to plant genetic resources (PGR). Efforts have been made by ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), Hyderabad to customize the field book to use as one stop solution for plant genetic resource management. We have customized the app for collection of characterization data of eight crops namely sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, foxtail millet, barnyard millet, proso millet, kodo millet and little millet. The app is customized for DUS characterization of sorghum and collecting passport data for PGR exploration. Twenty-seven agro-morphological traits are created as SOR GERM file for sorghum characterization. The trait screen has several advantages including saving of note book data collection. The off-line data collection reduces threat of sharing the data without owner knowledge. ICAR-IIMR-Hyderabad has initiated the training on field book to the researchers in the country with a target of 5000 researchers by 2020. This mobile app has potential to reduce paper usage, cutting of large number of trees and thus saving carbon foot prints and also facilitating more efficient data collection, analysis and storage.