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Requests for material

One of the concrete benefits of publishing your collection on Genesys is that users worldwide can identify accessions they would like to work with and reach out to you for material. This section covers how that request workflow operates end-to-end, from the user's perspective, from your perspective as a data provider and around the wider legal and operational framework that sits alongside it.

Three questions structure the section:

  • What Genesys does and does not do in a request
  • How the request lifecycle works from submission to response
  • What role Genesys plays in the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) and the wider Multilateral System of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA)

Genesys as connector, not distributor​

Before walking through the workflow, it is worth being unambiguous about what Genesys is doing when a request comes through, because misunderstandings on this point cause most of the friction in the provider-user relationship.

Genesys facilitates the connection between a user and a genebank. It routes the request, it captures the accession identifiers involved and it makes the user's contact details available to you. That is the extent of its role.

Genesys does not:

  • Fulfill or ship material; that is entirely for you, the holding genebank
  • Handle phytosanitary certification, import permits or quarantine clearance
  • Issue Standard Material Transfer Agreements (SMTAs): see the SMTA section below
  • Coordinate payments (if your institute charges cost-recovery fees for shipping or seed handling)
  • Guarantee that a request will be responded to or within what timeframe
  • Obligate you to accept a request

The consistent principle: the request is routed by Genesys; the response is entirely yours.

The request lifecycle​

The request workflow has three phases: the user submits, you receive and you respond. Understanding all three from your side helps you interpret what appears in your provider dashboard when a request arrives.

From the user's side: how requests are submitted​

A user's workflow is short:

  1. Search Genesys for accessions of interest. Users typically filter by genus, species, biological status (SAMPSTAT), country of origin or other passport descriptors covered in the What Is Passport Data? section
  2. Add candidate accessions to "My List", Genesys' built-in mechanism for gathering a working set of records across searches. This requires the user to be logged into a registered Genesys account
  3. Submit a request for material from the "My List" view. The user typically confirms their contact details and the intended use of the material at this step

Once submitted, Genesys sends the user a confirmation email from helpdesk@genesys-pgr.org acknowledging the request. In parallel, the request is routed to the holding genebank(s), meaning if the user has selected accessions from multiple institutes, each institute sees only the accessions relevant to its own collection.

What you receive as a data provider​

When a user submits a request that includes accessions held by your genebank, two things happen from your side:

The request appears in your Genesys provider dashboard. Under the "Requests from Users" section, you will see a new entry containing the requester's details, the list of accessions requested and the date submitted.

You are notified by email. The Crop Trust helpdesk routes a notification to the email address(es) registered against your genebank.

To reach the dashboard, log into Genesys with a user account that has data-provider permissions for your genebank (see Procedure to Join Genesys on establishing permissions). The "Requests from Users" view lists all open requests for your collection. Each row typically shows the date the request was submitted, the requester's name and institution, the number of accessions included and the current status of the request. Clicking on an individual request opens a detail view showing the specific accession numbers, the requester's stated purpose and any additional information they provided at submission.

Responding to a request​

The mechanics of responding to a request are between you and the requester, not between you and Genesys. Once a request reaches you, you are in the same position you would be in if the same request had arrived by direct email to your genebank; you decide whether to accept, decline, defer or ask for more information.

Practical considerations:

Review the accessions requested against your current holdings. The passport data on Genesys should match your live holdings if you have been keeping your records current (see Frequency of Data Updates), but occasionally the request may include an accession that has been recently regenerated, retired or deaccessioned since your last upload. Verify before committing to distribute.

Confirm any regulatory or phytosanitary considerations. These vary by country, by crop and by the requester's location. Some accessions may not be eligible for international distribution without additional documentation.

Determine whether the accessions are covered by the Multilateral System. The MLS status of each accession (MCPD Descriptor 27, MLSSTAT) determines whether the SMTA applies; see the SMTA section below.

Communicate directly with the requester. You can always contact the requester by email using the address they provided at submission. Many providers find it useful to send an initial acknowledgement soon after receiving the request, even before they can commit to fulfillment.

Your controls as a provider: availability and opt-in​

Genesys gives you meaningful control over which of your accessions can be requested and whether your genebank participates in the request workflow at all. There are two levels of control and both need to be aligned for a request to be possible.

Level 1: opt in to receive requests at the genebank level​

Before end-users can request material from your collection at all, your genebank must opt in to allow requests through Genesys. This is a genebank-level decision that applies across your whole collection.

If your genebank has not opted in (for example, because you are still onboarding or because your institute has decided to allow discovery but not fulfilment through the platform), Genesys will not surface a "Request material" option to users for any of your accessions. Users can still discover your collection and see your records; they simply cannot initiate a request through Genesys.

You do not need to make this decision at the moment of joining Genesys. Many genebanks opt in once their initial data is uploaded and they are ready to handle inbound requests. Others opt in from the start. The setting is reversible; you can pause requests at any point, for example during a busy regeneration cycle or a staff transition.

Level 2: per-accession availability control​

Even after your genebank has opted in, you can control availability at the level of individual accessions using the AVAILABLE field.

AVAILABLE is a Genesys-specific extension to the MCPD standard; it is not part of the core MCPD but is added by Genesys to support the request workflow. Setting it to true for an accession makes that specific record requestable; setting it to false (or leaving it unset) means the accession remains visible for discovery but cannot be requested.

This gives you accession-level granularity: you can publish 10,000 accessions and make only 8,000 of them requestable at any given time, adjusting the flag as your stock levels change. Common reasons for temporarily setting AVAILABLE to false on specific accessions:

  • Seed stock is currently too low for distribution
  • A regeneration cycle is in progress
  • The accession is under a temporary embargo (for example, awaiting the completion of a research publication)
  • The accession has been transferred to another institute
  • Quality control on the seed lot has not yet been completed

Interaction with historical accessions​

Accessions marked as historical (using the Genesys HISTORIC or CURATION fields; see Frequency of Data Updates for the field mechanics) cannot be requested through Genesys, regardless of what you have set on AVAILABLE. The historical marking takes precedence.

This is deliberate: historical accessions represent material your genebank no longer holds. Users can still discover and cite these records, but the request-material function is not available for them.

The Standard Material Transfer Agreement​

The Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) is the standardized contract used to transfer plant genetic material covered by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). It applies to material listed under the Treaty's Multilateral System, commonly referred to as MLS accessions.

Genesys does not issue SMTAs. The role of Genesys is to make the accessions visible and the request routable. The SMTA, when applicable, is issued between the provider and the recipient, using tools that sit outside Genesys.

The most widely used tool is FAO's Easy-SMTA system, at mls.planttreaty.org. Easy-SMTA is a separate FAO-operated service that walks providers through the SMTA generation and issuance workflow.

How MLS status appears on Genesys. Each accession record includes an MLS status indicator (from the MCPD MLSSTAT field, values 0 for not in the MLS, 1 for included). This shows on the accession detail view, but does not trigger any workflow change in the request flow itself, based on current sandbox observation.

What this means for you as a provider. When you receive a request that includes MLS-flagged accessions, you handle the SMTA workflow separately from Genesys, typically by logging into Easy-SMTA, generating an SMTA for the transfer, having the recipient countersign and reporting the executed agreement to the Treaty Secretariat. For non-MLS accessions, your institute's own material transfer arrangements apply.

A note on Genesys's role at this point. Genesys does not surface an SMTA generation button, a direct Easy-SMTA link or any workflow-level differentiation between MLS-flagged and non-MLS-flagged accessions at the point of a request. This reflects the intentional separation of concerns between the discovery-and-connection role that Genesys plays and the legal-transfer role that Easy-SMTA plays. Requests appear the same regardless of MLSSTAT value; providers apply the appropriate SMTA workflow (or their own arrangement, for non-MLS accessions) once the request is being fulfilled.

The Pass or Fail Check

  1. "We have to allow everyone to request material." No. Your genebank must first opt in to receive requests at all and even once opted in, you decide which accessions are available for distribution via the AVAILABLE field on each accession. Even for accessions that are marked available, you retain full discretion over how you respond to individual requests. The Data Provider Agreement (see Key Characteristics of the DPA) does not obligate you to distribute material to anyone in particular; it commits you to publishing your data on Genesys, not to fulfilling every request that follows.

    Genesys is the channel through which requests reach you. What you do with those requests is your call.

  2. "We will get thousands of requests for material if we enable them." No. In practice, request volumes for most providers are modest. The population of Genesys users actively requesting material is a fraction of the total user base and requests are typically targeted (a breeder looking for a specific set of drought-tolerant accessions or a researcher pursuing a particular taxonomic question) rather than bulk or speculative.

    Providers with very large or historically significant collections may receive more requests than average, but the volume is manageable for the great majority.

    If request volumes at any point become a concern for your capacity, the availability controls described above give you tools to manage the load, for example temporarily marking parts of the collection as unavailable while you catch up or pausing requests at the genebank level entirely.

  3. "We are obliged to accept the requests for material if we receive them from Genesys." No. The genebank makes its own decision on each request. Genesys does not act as a legal intermediary between you and the requester; it is a routing service. Neither the Terms and Conditions that bind the users nor the Data Provider Agreement that binds you creates any obligation to fulfill a specific request.

    You may decline a request for any legitimate reason, including but not limited to: insufficient stock, phytosanitary constraints, an intended use that conflicts with your institutional policy, incomplete requester details or a legally binding restriction on the accession. It is good practice to reply to the requester explaining the reason for the decline, but not required by Genesys or by the DPA.

Impact: how your data serves the wider community​

Publishing your collection on Genesys does more than open the door to material requests. It makes your accessions discoverable to a global community that reuses genebank data in ways that go well beyond direct requests for material.

What is Genesys? covers the terms under which Genesys users can access and reuse your data, with some worked examples of how Genesys data has been reused in published research. From the requests-and-impact perspective covered here, two additional user-side capabilities are worth being aware of, since they shape how researchers work with your data even when they never submit a request:

  • Users can download accession data for offline analysis. Genesys provides download functions including a "download MCPD only" option that returns just the passport data columns. This means researchers can perform sophisticated analytical work on your collection without ever needing to request material, using only the descriptive information you have published.
  • Users can click through from any accession to its holding institute. The INSTCODE ("Holding Institute") link on each accession record leads to a full profile of the institute holding it, your institute. This is one of the mechanisms by which citation and attribution flow back to your genebank when your data informs published research.