title: PlantDB - a versatile database for managing plant research.
abstract: 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.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We have been using PlantDB for several years in our laboratory and found that it greatly facilitates access to relevant information.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Sciences & Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, ETH Zurich, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland. lhennig@ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Vivien
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Exner
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hirsch-Hoffmann
authors.forename: Wilhelm
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gruissem
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hennig