LOS BAÑOS, Philippines (2 June 2025) – Faster and smarter crop breeding depends on better digital tools, and making sure these tools can work together is critical. To support this, developers, data scientists, and breeders from the BrAPI Community gathered at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for a weeklong hackathon focused on improving digital systems used in breeding programs.
BrAPI, or Breeding Application Programming Interface, is an open-source technical standard that connects breeding software systems. It allows tools to exchange data efficiently, improving accuracy, speed, and coordination across CGIAR and partner programs. This seamless data flow helps breeders accelerate the development of improved crop varieties.
Welcoming the participants, Joy Gimena, Head of Information Technology at IRRI, shared about the institute’s upcoming 65th anniversary, where strengthening collaborative partnerships is a core focus.
“We’ve always supported shared digital platforms across CGIAR, and this event shows what that kind of partnership can achieve,” she said. “It reflects our strategy to build strong, global connections that support breeders with practical, data-driven tools.”
Building on her message, Dr. Sankalp Bhosale, Interim Head of Rice Breeding Innovations, pointed to the critical role of data in crop improvement.
“Data is objective and connected. It strengthens digital systems for both internal teams and partners,” he said. “Our challenge is to make systems compatible, improve data sharing, and support better decisions.”
One key focus during the event was integrating the Enterprise Breeding System (EBS) with the Field Book application. This setup supports efficient field data collection and helps streamline breeding operations.
The hackathon also featured several projects showcases. CIMMYT introduced a browser-based version of DArTView for visualizing genetic diversity. Clemson University shared enhancements and bug fixes to the Field Book application. The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT presented updates on Artemis, an image-recognition app for field data collection that is now integrated with BrAPI-ready platforms like EBS. IRRI demonstrated a new EBS integration with Bioflow to streamline sample tracking in laboratory pipelines, along with a proof-of-concept tool for storing plot-level images captured through Field Book.
Fifty-four participants attended the hybrid event, representing different centers, organizations and universities like Cornell University, National Taiwan University, Texas Tech University, Clemson University, Boyce Thompson Institute, CIMMYT, the Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT, IITA, ICARDA, and IRRI.
Peter Selby, BrAPI Project Coordinator, led sessions on peer review, technical updates, and improvements to the standard. Most of the hackathon focused on team-based project work, with scheduled discussions on shared priorities. The event was co-organized with Jahzeel Ramos Calosa from the Breeding and Research Services (BRS) Digital Solutions (DS) team at IRRI.