What is Genesys?
Genesys is the world's largest online portal to information about crop diversity conserved in genebanks. As of January 2026, you can find on the portal:
- More than 4.4 million accession records
- From over 500 genebanks around the world
- With 900+ trait datasets and subsets
- And 440+ characterization and evaluation datasets
Data is translated into multiple languages. You, and anyone else, can explore it online or download it in bulk, subject to the Terms and Conditions of Use.
Our primary goal is to support global food security. By making crop diversity discoverable, we help plant breeders and researchers find the genetic characteristics needed to develop new cultivars that are more nutritious and better adapted to environmental challenges.
Genesys is managed by the Crop Trust, is free to use and is open to any institute that conserves plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (PGRFA).
Genesys is a completely free resource. It is free to use for everyone and free for any institute that wishes to join as a data provider.
What Genesys is
In short, Genesys is a portal, a discovery layer and a connector. It serves two audiences:
- Users of genebank data: plant breeders, researchers, conservationists and policymakers looking for material to work with or evidence to inform decisions. They search across many collections at once, discover accessions of interest and reach out to the holding genebank for material.
- Genebanks (Data Providers): to make your collection discoverable in one place, to align with international information-sharing standards and to receive and route requests for material.
For users, Genesys offers several discovery tools that depend on rich data being available:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| AI-powered search | Searches across 4.4 million+ accessions using a rich mix of data |
| Similarity Search | Finds accessions in different genebanks that are similar to a given one, useful when a user's first-choice accession is not available for distribution |
| Climate Search | Identifies accessions with specific climate adaptations by analyzing the conditions where they were collected, used by researchers working on climate-resilient crops |
| Subsetting Tool | Lets users define custom subsets of accessions based on climate, soil and other environmental variables. See the Subsetting Tool guide for details. |
What Genesys is not
Understanding what Genesys does not do helps define its role in the ecosystem.
- Genesys is not a genebank. It does not hold, store or maintain any plant material. All seeds, tissue cultures and other germplasm stay with the holding institution.
- Genesys does not handle phytosanitary processes. Import permits, phytosanitary certificates and quarantine clearance are the responsibility of the holding genebank.
- Genesys does not issue Standard Material Transfer Agreements (SMTAs). When a user requests material, the holding genebank issues the SMTA, where applicable under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).
- Genesys does not own the data. Data providers retain full intellectual property rights over the records they publish.
- Genesys does not coordinate shipping or payments. Once a request reaches the genebank, fulfillment is handled between the provider and the requester.
Our Story
Our journey began with the 2001 adoption of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture by the United Nations. The Treaty highlighted a clear need for a system that allows breeders, farmers and researchers to share genetic information more easily.
In 2008, we started building Genesys. This early development was a collaboration between Bioversity International, the Secretariat of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, and the Crop Trust.
We launched the first Genesys portal in 2011. At the time, it included information from three of the largest genebank networks: ECPGR's EURISCO, CGIAR's SINGER and the USDA's GRIN. Even back then, these collections represented about a third of the world's total.
Things evolved in 2012 when a task force, which later became the Genesys Advisory Committee, recommended that the Crop Trust take over as the legal entity responsible for Genesys. After three more years of development, we published an updated portal that allows our partner institutes to provide continuous updates to their data.
Since then, we have been lucky to see our community grow. More users and data providers join us every day, bringing more accession information to people all over the world.
We are still growing and improving. Our future goals include adding more data providers, making our search tools even better, and expanding the environmental data we offer. These are improvements our stakeholders have asked for, and we are excited to implement them. Because you use the information in Genesys, your perspective is the most valuable guide for our future development.
Integration with other systems
Genesys is integrated with other major systems used by the PGRFA community to ensure data consistency and reduce duplication.
How Genesys relates to FAO WIEWS
The World Information and Early Warning System on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (FAO WIEWS) is FAO's system for monitoring and reporting on PGRFA. It serves a different purpose from Genesys and the two systems work in complement rather than competition.
| FAO WIEWS | Genesys | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Country-level monitoring and reporting on the conservation and use of PGRFA, including SDG indicator 2.5.1 and the Second Global Plan of Action | Accession-level discovery of plant genetic material held in genebanks |
| Main contributors | National Focal Points appointed by governments | Individual genebanks and aggregating networks |
| Granularity | Institute-level and country-level summaries; some accession-level passport data | Detailed accession-level passport, characterization, evaluation and image data |
| Managed by | FAO | The Crop Trust |
The most concrete point of contact between the two systems is the WIEWS INSTCODE, a globally unique identifier assigned by FAO to institutes that conserve PGRFA. Genesys uses this same identifier to recognize genebanks, which aligns reporting across both systems.
How Genesys relates to GLIS and DOIs
The Global Information System (GLIS) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) issues Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for plant genetic accessions, giving each accession a persistent, citable, globally unique identifier.
The integration between Genesys and GLIS reduces duplicate effort:
- DOI Registration: Genebanks register their own DOIs through GLIS.
- Automatic Sync: When an updated record containing a GLIS DOI is uploaded to Genesys, Genesys automatically sends GLIS the URL of the corresponding Genesys page, and makes the latest data available to GLIS for syncing.
- Cross-checking: The systems use the FAO WIEWS institute code to ensure records match across systems.
This allows a single, well-maintained record in Genesys to serve discoverability across multiple ecosystems without duplicate data entry.
Once you register a DOI for an accession, the GLIS DOI landing page for that record becomes publicly accessible, regardless of how you manage the accession's visibility in Genesys. Do not register DOIs for accessions you want to keep private or restricted. If in doubt, refer to the sensitive-data guidance in What Is Passport Data? before registering.
Where the data comes from
Genesys brings together some of the world's largest databases of plant genetic resources. We collaborate closely with major networks and institutes, such as the European Cooperative Programme for Plant Genetic Resources (ECPGR) and the CGIAR genebanks, which update hundreds of thousands of records every year. In addition, many individual genebanks and smaller networks publish their collection information on Genesys to share their valuable resources with the global community.