The INSUSFAR project aims at analyzing the effects of genetic diversity within winter wheat and winter barley populations on their ability to adapt to low input farming conditions. The project furthermore analyzes historical data on the breeding progress during the past two decades and conducts socio-economic and ecological studies of farming systems. In the course of INSUSFAR, the individual project partners deliver a very diverse array of data that have to be stored and have to be provided to all project partners for further analyses. This is achieved by the implementation of an information system that meets the specific needs of the INSUSFAR project.

Demand analysis and functional requirements

A comprehensive demand analysis was conducted to identify the individual needs of the INSUSFAR project partners regarding the information system. Based on the contributions of the project partners, 11 use cases are described that define the functional requirements for the information system. The use cases cover all INSUSFAR aspects where data are generated, extracted, stored and retrieved, e.g. data on the origin of populations and pedigrees of varieties, data on cultivation conditions, genetic data, characterization and evaluation data from field trials, climate and soil data, historical trial data, as well as economic data. In addition, non-functional and technical requirements are defined within the demand analysis. The information system was named ROBUSTUM which refers to the expected robustness of populations towards varying stress conditions. In a first step, a basic database was designed and implemented to meet the short-term need to store and retrieve historical trial data. Exemplarily, 11,888 records from German variety trials between the years 2001 and 2015 representing 307 varieties tested at 60 locations were imported into the database. The data can be retrieved using a web-based user interface and query tool.

Design of ROBUSTUM

The structure of ROBUSTUM was designed based on the use cases defined previously. An entity-relationship diagram reflects the structure and dependencies of tables and attributes that are implemented within the database scheme running in the background. Activity diagrams were assembled to model the user-system interactions of ROBUSTUM with respect to breeding material import, editing, query, and export. The functionality for breeding material documentation and to record crosses as breeding actions was implemented. Exemplarily, an entire MAGIC crossing scheme that starts with 32 winter barley varieties and that comprises 716 crossing steps and lines was imported into ROBUSTUM. For optimal illustration of such complex structures, a module for graphical display of pedigrees was also implemented. Furthermore, a functionality was designed that enables adding of further attributes to specific tables. ROBUSTUM will provide access to the data generated within the project also beyond the duration of INSUSFAR, and will furthermore comprise a flexible structure to serve as an information system template for related future projects.

Perspective

ROBUSTUM is being established as an information system consisting of a relational database and a user interface that covers all needs of the INSUSFAR project partners as defined by the demand analysis with its 11 use cases. A user-friendly web-interface is being developed for easy data annotation and access to the database. ROBUSTUM will not only be useful for the INSUSFAR project, but will - due to its flexible structure - also constitute a valuable resource for future projects that investigate crop populations with respect to agricultural inputs, ecological services and economic outputs.

Project partners

  • Chair of Plant Nutrition, Technical University of Munich
  • Chair for Organic Farming and Agronomy, Technical University of Munich
  • Department of Organic Plant Breeding and Agrobiodiversity, University of Kassel
  • Department of Farm Management, University of Kassel
  • Department of Ecological Plant Protection, University of Kassel
  • Institute for Breeding Research on Agricultural Crops, Julius Kühn-Institut

The project is being funded by BMBF (031A350B).