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98 SEEDWORLD.COM DECEMBER 2015 NOT TO BELABOR a worn out joke but Plant breeding Yes theres an app for that. In fact there are several and theyve become a key part of the breed- ing and selection process for breeders around the world. New technologies in plant breeding bring with them mountains of data that simply cannot be processed and analyzed effectively with older methods. Instead of continuing on with pencils paper and possible spreadsheets breeders are taking advantage of the ability of mobile devices to not only save time and store vast amounts of data but also to cut down on the types of mistakes that could be common with older methods. If youre using pencil and paper if youre using Excel sheets its just going to slow you down says Dieter Mulitze president and chief executive officer of Agronomix Software Inc. based in Winnipeg Canada. Breeders are realizing the limitations of that. A significant part of the digital revolution in plant breeding comes from the advent of genomic tools that make it easier for breeders to see details down to changes in single alleles or a variation of a single gene. Parts of DNA will change by one allele or a single nucleotide polymor- phism SNP. To map that youve got to sequence it Mulitze says. There are new bioinformatic methods being developed all the time. And to keep up software creators are con- stantly adding to the breeders toolbox to ensure that the mountains of data that are recorded can be stored analyzed and used to make the best decisions in the lab and in the field. Mistakes Will Be Made To be clear the average Microsoft Excel user likely has no concept of how powerful a spread- sheet tool they have in that program. Data can be sorted arranged compiled and analyzed through the more technical functions of the program. But for a plant breeder the process of getting the information to those sheets in the first place is fraught with problems. Some breeders will log observations in a note- book with pen or pencil and then sit down at a com- puter at a later time to transcribe that data into the spreadsheets. It opens the breeder to the possibility that a fat finger could turn a five into a six or that Technology can help breeders keep pace with science. Brian Wallheimer Breeding Better Through Software