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Version 33 and 

AGROBASE Generation II at the ACCI 

 

March, 2011 

Dear    

Version 33 of AGROBASE Generation II has been released! This version offers many new enhancements --especially for hybrid crops breeding. You can watch this online video of Version 33 to see the major enhancements "in action".   
  • Enhanced graphing - 3D graphs of your data to show field trends, for example. This is superior to trend maps.
  • Relational view of data - you can now relate or link data from treatments, parents, or populations and also with external dBASE files. Set up, for example, relationships between parents and offspring to assess hybrid performance, make selections and much more. Then save those file relationships and open them again with a few clicks. See the video for an example. This significantly extends the relational possibilities of Generation II.
  • Enhanced image display -view images of genotypes directly while viewing experiments and means, nurseries, and in treatments, parents and populations. This gives a more direct view within the context of a genotype's data.        
  • Import for seed inventory - a new import tool lets you directly import single or multiple seed lots for any genotype. Also, the total amount of seed for any genotype is immediately available as a data column in treatments, parents, or populations.
  • Cross predictions saved to crosses - when using the cross prediction tool, you can  now save 2-way crosses directly to the main Crosses node and from there continue the development of crosses.
  • 2-D bar codes - put more information into bar codes with the DataMatrix font.
  • ... and more ... see the Version 33 PDF from our web site with all the details. 
Are you are attending any of the following trade shows in 2011? If so, please come by and visit us. We would be pleased to show you version 33 or answer any questions that you may have. 

ISF World Seed Congress, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, May 30 to June 1.  
13th International Rapeseed Congress, Prague, Czech Republic, June 5 - 9.
American Society of Agronomy, San Antonio, Texas, USA, Oct. 16-19.
Seed Expo 2011, American Seed Trade Association, Chicago, Ill, USA, Dec. 4-7.  
  
Yours Sincerely

Dieter K. Mulitze, PhD
President and CEO
Agronomix Software, Inc.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Phone: 1-204-487-4245

African Centre for Crop Improvement 

 

The African Centre for Crop Improvement (ACCI) is located on the campus of the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The aim of the ACCI is "to train African plant breeders in Eastern and Southern Africa, on African crops, to breed better crops using conventional and molecular breeding tools." Their focus is "on the breeding of African and African grown Crops (cereals, roots and tubers and pulses) for increased drought tolerance and improved food security for the poor in Africa." The ACCI has decided to train their staff and PhD students until 2016 in AGROBASE Generation II to strenghten their plant breeding programs. 
  
Dr Mulitze was pleased to instruct the first cohort of 12 students at the ACCI, Feb. 14-18. The 12 students are from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, the Republic of South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. In the photo below, Prof. Hussein Shimelis, who orgainzed the course, is on the far left in the front row. Prof. Shimelis offers this reflection on the course "... the training provided an overall understanding for students on how AGROBASE Generation II functions. AGROBASE will be helpful in various areas including 1) to plan and conduct field trials, 2) provide long-term database management and 3) data analysis for the ACCI students and academics. AGROBASE could be a useful resource in training graduate students in Plant Breeding and Agronomy at the University."
  
Dr Mulitze is front centre, and Prof. Mark Laing, Director of the ACCI, is seated third from the front right. The twelve graduate students in the AGROBASE Generation II training course are in the back row. The long term vision is to strenghten the national plant breeding programs in Africa with AGROBASE Generation II. Agronomix Software is honored to play a role in the food crops development and security in Africa.

ACCI 2011
  
Indian Seed Congress, Hyderabad, India

 

This was the second Seed Congress held in India, held this year at the Novotel Hotel Convention Centre, Feb. 22-23, Hyderabad. We were very encouraged with the strong response from various seed companies in India, interested in AGROBASE Generation II. It was also a great opportunity for us to visit with our client Indian seed companies. Significant interest was shown in a regional AGROBASE Generation II training course in India, potentially in April and November. Furthermore, it was great to have Carey Biggs with VSNi, the developers of GenStat, in our booth. We would like to thank everyone who visited our booth at this congress. 

 

Training Courses for 2011-2012

 

With the growing popularity of the online tutorials, we are offering fewer regional training courses. Accordingly, the Dusseldorf January 2011 and St Louis, USA February 2011 courses were postponed for 2011. We will, though, continue to offer private, customized training courses for seed companies, universities, and government research centres. The schedule for such courses is beginning to fill up for 2011, so if your organization would be interested in such a course, please do let us know as soon as possible. We do anticipate one or two regional courses for 2012.  Please do let us know if you would be interested in a regional course in Germany for Europe, or North America, or another region, and also the time of year, since that would help us in our planning.