Organizational structure and information technological support of national gene banks

Abstract

Implementation of national gene bank collections requires organizational structures of participants in the scheme as well as technical information technology (IT) support for its operation. The former is described for the Dutch gene bank collections while the IT support has been developed as a generic procedure adaptable to other gene bank collections while it was implemented for the Dutch cryo collections. The database software allows bookkeeping for the gene bank, allowing data entry to a central database from different location on the internet. It also facilitates generation and transfer of aggregated data for supra national databases like FAO's DAD-IS (Domestic Animal Diversity Information System). The software is freely available under the Open Source GNU public license.