The Nordic Gene Bank documentation system, SESTO. 17th September 2004. Dag Endresen (NGB). http://www.ngb.se/ http://sesto.nordgen.org/

1. The Nordic Gene Bank documentation system SESTO [2004-09-17 ]

2. SESTO SESTO - The NGB documentation system. The main purpose of the NGB documentation system is management of the material in the NGB seedstore . This includes basic descriptions of the seed samples and their location in the seedstore. Second NGB publish data on the collection to meet the needs of public users. NGB has developed one single web application to meet both these needs. This approach has proven effective, flexible and secure.

3. SESTO, taxon, culton, accson SESTO - The NGB documentation system. Taxon : Biological name for the stored seeds. Culton : Names of cultivars, landraces, breeding material and similar germplasm groups below the taxonomic level. Accession : The stored seeds are referred as accessions and stored as separate samples by their harvest year as batch .

4. SESTO collecting places GIS The location of collecting places are visualized on a map if the longitude and latitude is recorded in the database. SESTO accession detail

5. Pictures Some entries in SESTO have picture illustrations. Pictures are registered in the online NGB picture archive.

6. ” The evaluation data analyzer”. A statistical summary is presented for evaluation and characterization data.

7. Login The NGB staff and other trusted users may log in with a personal username and password. Each user is given individual rights to view or edit data.

8. Edit accession

9. Edit Activ collection

10. Nordic collaboration The main network for NGBs Nordic regional collaboration is the NGB crop working groups with experts from all the Nordic countries. The new Nordic national programmes on biodiversity have also established a close collaboration with NGB. One of the priorities often presented by the national programmes is the development of a common Nordic information platform . This activity is very similar to the work NGB has started to plan on a joint genebank documentation system together with the Baltic countries.

11. Regional cooperation Regional collaboration in the near area The Baltic region and Russia NGB has hosted training in genebank documentation as well as more technical training workshops on database and server administration. Plans for future IT cooperation include a regional online documentation system. Three alternatives are possible. 1) To host the application from NGB. 2) To support establishment of a similar national system as sesto in the individual countries. 3) To support the development of better data exchange routines built on local more diverse national documentation systems. Alternative 1 is partly implemented as a demonstration for Estonia and Latvia. Finance, further technical development and formal agreements of the commitments of the participants is necessary. Our Baltic partners have indicated a great interest in further development of this solution. Nikolai I. Vavilov

12. International cooperation International activities NGB has an extensive international cooperation on genebank documentation. The main focus and activity is transfer of knowledge and technology. Southern Africa, SADC region. NGB has hosted training in computer skills for the SADC students at the genebank management summer course. (10 to 15 SADC students have visited NGB every year for the last 13 years.) East Africa NGB contributes as technical consultant for the Eastern Africa Plant Genetic Resources Network (EAPGREN). Support on development of documentation solutions are planned to start in 2005. Europe NGB is a central participant in the development of genebank documentation strategies and solutions for Europe. Most of the work is organized through the ECP/GR network. NGB was a partner in the EPGRIS project (2001-2003) financed from EU.

13. EURISCO GBIF International documentation networks Cooperation on joining data on biological databases has received increased interest. EURISCO NGB participated the EPGRIS project (2000-2003) which resulted in the EURISCO database. This is an online searchable database of passport data (FAIO/IPGRI Multi-crop passport descriptors) from all major genebanks of Europe. The database is managed by IPGRI on behalf of the European plant genetic resources community. GBIF NGB joined GBIF in 2004. The mission of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is to make the world's primary data on biodiversity freely and universally available via the Internet.