ICIS History
From ICISWiki
During the 1980’s, CIMMYT devised an information strategy and developed software on a main-frame computer to facilitate unambiguous identification of wheat germplasm thereby establishing links between information from different sources. The software resided on a VAX computer and was programmed in S1032. In 1992, the International Wheat Information System (IWIS) was started with the vision of uniting all wheat scientists through PC-based stand-alone software was. This vision of an integrated information system continued to grow with experience and increasing computer power. The IWIS compact disk (Fox et al., 1996) duplicated data querying capabilities and some of the genealogical diagnostics of the mainframe version. CIMMYT canvassed other CGIAR centers and individual researchers in many counties to establish a project to develop an International Crop Information system applicable to a wide range of crops.
In the early 1990s IRRI was faced with a fazing out of obsolete mainframe computers and with them their 30-year old crop improvement information system. They had already embarked on the development of genetic resources information system but this did not include the integration of breeding and evaluation information. IRRI was therefore keen to join in the development of ICIS.
One main stumbling stock was incompatible systems between IRRI and CIMMYT, (Oracle and S1032). The deadlock was broken at a planning meeting in 1994, the first ICIS workshop, where a decision was taken to use Microsoft’s Open Database Connectivity Protocol, ODBC which promised independence between the application and the database program. The problems of unique identification of germplasm and complete access for remote users were solved over then next two years with the development of the dual system architecture with public central, and private local databases, and the decision to identify germplasm with combination of registered user ID and local germplasm ID.
By 1996 work had started on the design of the data management system. Innovative ideas were required to overcome the constraints of the overly restrictive data models of most breeding and evaluation databases. ICRAF, who manage the most complicated of the agricultural experiments, had been thinking about models capable of storing raw data from any experimental design. The provided valuable insight and assistance in developing the DMS data model for ICIS.
Between 1996 and 2000 ICIS implementation for wheat, rice, barley, chickpeas, beans, potatoes and sweet potatoes were implemented in various centers, and plant breeder’s interface was developed in IRRI. In 2001 the Australian GRDC supported the introduction of ICIS in wheat breeding programs in Australia, and programs at the Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at Swift Current in Saskatchewan also started using the system.
At this time, work was also being conducted to make the next logical extension to ICIS, to connect phenotypic data to genetic information, and a data model was developed to handle molecular and traditional genetic information. Work was also started at CIMMYT on a graphical user interface and the use if ICIS for natural resource management information in GIS data.
In 2001 Nunhems, an international vegetable breeding company decided to use ICIS to manage its international breeding programs in 25 different species using all kinds of breeding methodologies. They continue to work with the ICIS community to ensure the generality and applicability of the ICIS breeding interface.
In 2002 the decision was taken to merge the genetic resources information system at IRRI with IRIS, and to develop an ICIS user interface for management of genetic resources and seed inventories.
