PlantDB – a versatile database for managing plant research

BACKGROUND: Research in plant science laboratories often involves usage of many different species, cultivars, ecotypes, mutants, alleles or transgenic lines. This creates a great challenge to keep track of the identity of experimental plants and stored samples or seeds. RESULTS: Here, we describe PlantDB - a Microsoft(R) Office Access database - with a user-friendly front-end for managing information relevant for experimental plants. PlantDB can hold information about plants of different species, cultivars or genetic composition. Introduction of a concise identifier system allows easy generation of pedigree trees. In addition, all information about any experimental plant - from growth conditions and dates over extracted samples such as RNA to files containing images of the plants - can be linked unequivocally. CONCLUSION: We have been using PlantDB for several years in our laboratory and found that it greatly facilitates access to relevant information.