CryoWEB

While genebanks have a long history in plant breeding, setting up the equivalents in animal agriculture has only a relatively short history. The Rio Convention on Biological Diversity from 1992 has triggered a world wide focus on preservation of genetic resources which eventually lead to the Interlaken Declaration in 2007. In its ``Global Plan of Action for the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture'' setup of genebanks plays a prominent role, suggesting countries to establish and expand their national genebanks.
In 1997 we proposed ``A world wide emergency programme for the creation of national genebanks of endangered breeds in animal agriculture'' (Agri, 36/2005,36,pp1-6) on the basis of somatic cells and reported on the developed and tested procedure in ``A protocol for the cryo preservation of breeds by low-cost emergency cell banks - a pilot study'' (Animal 2008,2:1,pp1--8). Each genebank requires comprehensive documentation of its content. Accordingly, a proposition for a world wide emergency program for the setup of genebanks would also require a system for their documentation.
It was this background that delivered the motivation for the development of CryoWEB. With such a broad and also international target group of users, CryoWEB had to be sufficiently flexible to allow documentation of any type of material on any species. Furthermore, the information collected should be broadly available everywhere around the globe and at the same time allow a maximum amount of information to be retrieved.
This process of development has been a long one, starting with an apparently ever growing and changing list of ``necessary information'' depending on who would be asked. This problem lead to a very different approach by giving prospective users the option to define their own content in protocols and allow storage of documents with animal records.
Many persons were involved in the development of CryoWEB. Based on the metalayer of APIIS Helmut Lichtenberg comes to mind. During the design phase and the implementation of the first TK version Lina Yordanova was heavily involved. Truong Van Chi Cong developed the graphical user interface and made the move to a web application, along with Zhivko Duchev who also did the nationalization and the interfacing to FABISnet databases. For testing the team was expanded by Jutta Moosdorf, Detlef Schulze and Martina Henning, who also got involved in the documentation. Helmut Lichtenberg then comes in again with the development of the CryoWEB appliance which will allow rapid installation of this complex application as - what in computer jargon is called - a virtual machine.
As a first installation, CryoWEB has been used at our institute to set up the national genebank of Germany. In the EFABISnet project from the European Union, CryoWEB is established in 10 countries to serve as the informational center of national genebanks.
Being released under the GNU public licence, CryoWEB is available to everyone. We wish it success and be it of a little help in the management and preservation of animal genetic resources.