EBS Overview
Table of Contents
About EBS
The Enterprise Breeding System (EBS) is an open-source breeding software developed for crop breeding programs for resource-poor farmers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. EBS aims to support all breeding activities through the following domains: Core Breeding, Breeding Analytics, Service Management, and Core System.
Core Breeding
Create and manage germplasm, trials, and nurseries
Breeding Analytics
Connect data to powerful analytics and decision support tools
Service Management
Connect to internal and external services, including genotypic, quality, and phytosanitary analyses
Core System
Manage different user groups, their communication channels, and the domains they use
Since its development, EBS has been supporting various breeding programs. Here’s the number of crops and institutions that have been adopting the system:
Core Breeding Workflows
The tools and capabilities in the Core Breeding domain support three main workflows: trialing, advancing nursery, and crossing. They focus on biomaterial records and inventory, experiment and occurrence management, plot and cross data collection, harvest, and other key activities. The diagrams below outline the general steps per breeding workflow and their supporting EBS tools.
Concepts
Before diving into the how’s of using the tools, it is good to understand their key terms. We call them the EBS Concepts. In the succeeding pages, some EBS concepts are explained with a text description, while others are explained with diagrams and examples.
- EBS Crop Breeding Workflow
- EBS Adopters
- EBS Interoperability
- User Roles and Access
- EBS Concepts
- Germplasm, Seed Lots, Packages
- Germplasm names and attributes
- Experiment, Occurrence, Location
- Site, Field, Planting Area
- Experiment types, subtypes, and sub-subtypes
- Breeding stages, Pipelines, Projects
- Trial Designs and Planting Concepts
- Planting Coordinates
- Entries, Parents, and Plots
- Protocols
- Trait Variables
- Program, Team, User
Logging In
To ensure the security and confidentiality of your breeding information, the EBS can only be accessed by users whose names and email addresses are already registered in the system. If the user has not yet registered or is unsure whether information is already in the system, contact the organization’s system administrator. Once the account is created and secured, the next step is to log in!
Access to the EBS production environment varies per institute and/or breeding program. Don’t be confused with the EBS Demo, which is the official sandbox for training and demonstration purposes. Contact your data managers for the official URL.
Open the web browser and go to the EBS website.
From the landing page, click Login.
Make sure to sign in using an EBS-registered email account. Refer to the notes below for the login options.
A. Microsoft - For CGIAR accounts (e.g., CGIAR.org email addresses)
B. CIMMYTAD - For Microsoft accounts using CGIAR.org domain, but specifically provided by CIMMYT
C. Continue with Google - For Google accounts
D. For accounts other than Microsoft and Google, sign in using your email address and the password provided by the administrator.
Wait until you are redirected to the EBS Portal.
Congratulations! Welcome to the new breeding informatics software. Let’s get started with familiarizing ourselves with the system.