What is AgrobIS ?

AgrobIS is an information system developed by MARDI to provide the public direct access to data of all biological genetic resources conserved at MARDI. The system once fully operational will contain germplasm information of more than 40,000 accessions of Plant Genetic Resource for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA) which includes fruits, rice, vegetables, and medicinal plants. The system also consists of information on 2,500 isolates of microbial genetic resources and about 30,000 specimens of arthropods.

Agricultural biodiversity information system or AgrobIS was developed originally to fulfill the need for easy access to information on biological resources currently held at various genebanks, microbial resource collection centre and arthropod repository facility in MARDI.

Its development which is in line with the aspiration of Convention of Biodiversity (CBD), International treaty of Plant Genetic Resource (ITGRFA) and National Policy on Biological Diversity (NPBD) aimed at promoting and encouraging the exchange of information on biological diversity at local and international levels to enhance its sustainable utilization. Prior to the establishment of AgrobIS, MARDI has developed a few stand alone databases but all of them have limited access.

AgrobIS project was started in 2006 with development of standalone database using Access and Visual Basic. In 2007 the database was then upgrade as a web-based, easy access, integrated and comprehensive database system. The database covers, three main components of agrobiodiversity namely Plant Genetic Resource for Food and Agriculture (PGRFA), microbial resources and arthropods collection.

AgrobIS offers open-ended features which are capable to expand and evolve with the progress of ICT and to cater the future needs of the agriculture. The current version of AgrobIS supports multiple collection of different dataset by using object-hierarchical design to enable inter-relational between each of agrobiodiversity component even with different data format (database, pictures and geographical data). AgrobIS data can be viewed using any standard web browser that support javascript base scripting that complied with ECMA-262 Edition 3 (eg. Internet Explorer 5.7 or Mozilla Firefox 1.7 and above).