William Eusebio and Warren Constantino, both from the IRRI CRIL office, are spending two weeks working with Vivek Bindiganavile at the CIMMYT-Zimbabwe station. They are planning the integration of the maize field book system with ICIS (International Crop Information System) and finalizing software tools for capturing maize pedigree information from the breeding program. Initial development resulted in a semi-automated user interface for inputting and analyzing pedigree information to ensure the correctness of entries. A work plan was drawn to build the bridge that would attach the maize field book to the ICIS databases. Though two weeks is a short time, the foundations have been laid to connect another isle of information into the growing ICIS community. In a related activity, former CIMMYT maize scientist Scott McLean is wrapping up a several-month consultancy to gather Global Maize Program trial data and render them in a usable storage and access format.
Capacity development 