How to search Genesys

Genesys offers several ways to find accessions, from a simple keyword search on the homepage to detailed filters on the passport data page. Filters let you narrow results by taxonomy, provenance, crop, holding institute, date, biological status, climate, and more.

Here, you will learn how each filter works and how to combine them.

For some background on the passport data that the filters use, see Passport data.

How the filters work

Go to the Genesys homepage and click on "Browse accession records." This will take you to the Accession Data/Passport Data page. You can get to this page in a number of ways, but in all cases the filters pane appears on the left-hand side, with filters organized into groups (which are collapsed by default).

The right-hand side of the page presents information on the accessions that match your filters. Click the tabs at the top to see the information displayed in different ways.

Remember that only the accessions that match your current filters are shown. A good understanding of which filters to apply will enable you to find accessions of interest faster and more reliably. Below we will go through the filters in the order in which they appear on the left of the page.

Text search

The text search scans all passport data in Genesys for matching text. This type of search is also offered right on the Genesys homepage:

You can build text search queries using:

• Double quotes for exact phrases: "rice"
• Pipe symbol as the OR operator: rice | leaf
• Asterisk for prefix matching: rice*
• Parentheses for grouping: (rice | wheat) & organic
• Tilde for fuzzy search (finds similar spellings): solanum~

Try fuzzy search

Not sure of the exact spelling of your search term? Add a tilde (~) at the end of the term to find similar spellings. For example, solanum~ will match "solamun", "solanu", and other close variants.

Holding institute

You can narrow your search to a specific genebank using its WIEWS institute code. Type the first few letters of the genebank name or acronym and Genesys will auto-complete.

The auto-complete shows the top 10 matches sorted by number of accessions in Genesys. As you add other filters, this list updates automatically.

To filter by the country where the genebank is located, type the country name or its ISO code (for example, ITA for Italy).

Accession number

The accession number is the unique identifier of the material assigned by the genebank. This filter allows you to:

• Enter accession numbers manually
• Copy-paste a list of accession numbers from a spreadsheet
• Specify a minimum and maximum sequential number for a range search

Press Enter to add more accession numbers to the query.

Genesys automatically extracts the numerical part of accession numbers, so you can query for a numeric range.

Date

Several date filters help you find accessions based on when information was recorded:

• Created on: filters by when the accession information was first created in Genesys
• Last modified: filters by when the accession information was updated
• Taxonomy last modified: filters accessions by the dates when their taxonomy was modified

Date filters work in a range format with start and end dates.

Crop

Genesys aggregates accession data by the crop names provided by genebanks. Use this filter to search for specific crops, e.g., rice, wheat, or potato.

Taxonomy

You can filter accessions by their scientific names in several ways:

Filter	What it matches	Example
Genus	The genus name (capitalize first letter)	Triticum
Species	Both genus and species names	Triticum aestivum
Specific epithet	Only the species name	aestivum
Subtaxon	Any level below species (variety, subspecies)	subsp. spelta

Genesys matches the name(s) you provide against GRIN Taxonomy, which means that searching can be extended to the synonyms GRIN Taxonomy recognizes. Look for the "Include synonyms in search results" button under the Taxonomy filter group.

Origin of material

This filter looks at the country from which material originated:

• If collected in the field, this is the country of the collecting site
• If a breeding line, this is the country where it was developed

You can also filter by geographic coordinates:

• Elevation: range of altitude above sea level in meters
• Longitude and latitude: ranges in decimal format

For more details on passport data and provenance fields, see Passport data.

Collecting data

This group of filters considers information related to the collecting mission during which accessions were collected:

• Collecting date: in YYYYMMDD format (use -- or 00 for unknown month/day)
• Collecting number: the identifier assigned by the collector, often the collector's name plus a number
• Collecting mission: the identifier of the collecting mission assigned by the collecting institute
• Location of collecting site: information below country level describing where the accession was collected

Biological status of accession

You can filter accessions by their level of development as defined in Multi-Crop Passport Descriptors (MCPD).

Type of germplasm storage

Genebanks maintain PGRFA in a variety of forms. A single accession may be maintained in different types of storage, so multiple options are possible. Storage categories are defined in MCPD.

Status

This filter category groups six important variables about an accession:

Filter	What it looks at
Available	Whether the accession has enough material for distribution
Is Genotyped	Whether the accession has genotype data
Has coordinates	Whether the accession has latitude/longitude data
MLS (Multilateral System)	Whether the accession is in the Multilateral System of the ITPGRFA
Svalbard backup	Whether the accession is backed up in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Has images	Whether the accession has images in Genesys
AEGIS	Whether the accession is part of A European Genebank Integrated System

Referenced accessions

Many accessions are included in subsets or datasets. Paste the unique ID of a subset or dataset in this filter to find the associated accessions.

For datasets, you can also click the relevant link in the sidebar.

Climate at origin

Genesys allows you to filter accessions according to the values of 19 temperature and precipitation variables at their collecting sites. This filter only works for accessions whose geographic coordinates (i.e., latitude and longitude) are available.

For a detailed guide to using the climate filter, including explanations of all climatic variables and how to interpret the results, see Searching by climate.

Directory pages

In the Directory navigation menu on the top banner of Genesys, you will find pages that aggregate accessions by crop, Data Provider, country, or network of genebanks conserving PGRFA. These directories provide another way to browse and discover material.

Getting an overview as you filter

The filters sidebar also acts as a mini-dashboard showing the distribution of accessions across different variables. For example, you can see how many accessions in your current filter set are tagged as different crops, say amaranth:

After applying filters, the overview numbers and available filter choices readjust dynamically. If you filter for accessions collected from Uruguay and none are tagged as amaranth, that option becomes invisible under the Crops filter. This makes it easier to sift through large collections.

Excluding matches

By default, filters search for matching values. To exclude certain matches, click the plus icon next to a filter value and switch it to a minus icon.

For example, if you want to find rice accessions but exclude those maintained by a specific institute, use the minus operator for that institute.

The excluded filters will show on top of the page.

Removing individual filters

The top of the page shows your currently applied filters. Click the x button next to any filter to remove it without resetting all filters.

Further help

For more examples and detailed walkthroughs, you may also be interested in our webinar recording on data filtering.

Feel free to contact helpdesk@genesys-pgr.org for support with filtering.