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The INRAE Centre for Vegetable Germplasm maintains collections of five plant species: melon, eggplant, tomato, pepper and lettuce. The collections are stored as seeds in cold rooms (+4°C or -20°C): in total the collections comprise more than 10,000 accessions with an average of 3 seed batches per accession in the 'active' collection, so in all 30,000 frequently used seed batches. These seed batches are used for the multiplications, descriptions, germination testing and dissemination carried out by the germplasm centre.

Each activity involves the production of technical and legal information (for example: germination rate, MTA, etc.) that needs to be associated with the seed batch in databases. The objective of this project is to improve the traceability of our seed batches and the downstream related processes. To do this, we will add a barcode label to each sachet of our active collection in order to facilitate the following processes: (i) a stock inventory (ii) recording germination tests (iii ) for seed distribution: information update on the available stock and recording of the shipment (iv) accession traceability during plant characterization to link the seed batch to the plant description. The second part of the project will make the link with the transition of our current databases to the Local Tool for Accession Management (OLGA).

The project is the continuation of an IBiSA project funded in 2017, which allowed us to (i) define a single coding system for the 5 species and (ii) edit new labels to start coding our new seed batches by purchasing the necessary material. It is also a requirement for the ISO9001 quality certification that we are undertaking.