I have been a plant breeder for over 40 years and I have used Agrobase for some time – I believe the first licence I used was AGROBASE 95, and I remember AGROBASE 97 came on 4 greenish-coloured stiffies! I graduated to Agrobase 98 which I used until August 2004 when the Seed Co team I was part of converted to Generation II.
The main motive to upgrade to Gen II was mainly for the research team to standardise software and to consolidate research data into crop-wide groups. We converted in August 2004 and Dieter Mulitze came to Zimbabwe to conduct a training course.
It took me some time to get my research groups created, especially as I wanted to go back in time and import as much ‘historical’ data as possible as I believe the true value of Gen II is being able to include as many years and locations into the conduct of variety comparisons. Gen II does a magnificent job summarising variety performance and comparison. The head-to-head analysis is great!
I have just recently joined a young seed company and have been given responsibility for improvement of a range of crops including self-and open pollinated crops, and to improve data management. With a total of about 8 crops, I do not believe I would manage this number of programs without Gen II.
Gen II allows our programme to be ready for planting considerably earlier than normal. This is made possible by more efficient handling of crosses, selections, populations and nurseries, and the designing of experiments. Seed preparation, labelling and printing of field record books are quickly and easily done.
I have found Gen II to be an extremely powerful tool and I would recommend it to all practicing plant breeders. |