Expansion of Genovix application towards conservation of global plant diversity
Genovix is a global solution to store, manage, analyze and query plant breeding and variety testing data. It is a new product of Agronomix Software Inc. as a result of 30 years of experience developing plant breeding and variety testing software products. Genovix is already being used by numerous breeding companies and universities across the globe since its release in 2019.
Genovix Vs Excel
Recently, the use of Genovix has increased. It is a database, seed inventory and trait management used by companies that work on diverse plant species. This took me back to my days of manual curation of Ethiopian flora in the National Herbarium. My personal solution to the surge of data in my Excel spreadsheets was to develop my own database system using Microsoft Access. Had I used Genovix, I can imagine how much time I could have saved.
All I needed to do was import my Excel sheet into Genovix, and automatically categorize and interconnect by accession number, genus, species, location of collection to the detail of GPS data. I could upload my images of the herbarium specimen, and any number of pictures I took during my collection. I could link images, documents related to additional information, such as related crops and research papers. Even so, all the hard work paid off and is now published as a book chapter (Kibret, 2021). As it turned out, Genovix is the solution I did not know I needed.
Efficiency of Genovix in the Long run
There is still a lot of data to be mined by the aid of a Software in my Excel sheets, and I am confident many more publications would come out of them. Now using Genovix, the herbarium specimen records can be digitalized. The SQL structure of Genovix enables recording and retrieving of information via different levels such as herbarium accession number, place of collection, species and other attributes a very simple task.
Genovix to Enhance Biodiversity Conservation Programs (globally)
It is undisputable that plants are the basis of life on Earth. We are losing unprecedented amounts of genetic resources every day across the globe due to modern lifestyle. Wild crop relatives offer genes to improve crops. Curating and studying plant biodiversity are important not only for food security but also to harness the potential of plants as medicine, biofuel and other industrial applications. More biodiversity conservation programs across the world would benefit from the use of Genovix: a highly relational database with capacity to store large amounts of data
Reference
Kibret, 2021. The potentials of African neglected and orphan crops in augmentation of African food security. In: Food Security and Safety African Perspectives, Babalola, Olubukola Oluranti (Ed.). DOI. 10.1007/978-3-030-50672-8
