Intercross: An Android app for plant breeding and genetics cross management

Plant breeding is fundamentally comprised of three cyclic activities: 1) intermating lines to generate novel allelic combinations, 2) evaluation of new plant cultivars in distinct environments, and 3) selection of superior individuals to be used as parents in the next breeding cycle. While digital technologies and tools are commonly utilized for the latter two stages, many plant research programs still rely on manual annotation and paper tags to track the crosses that constitute the basis of a plant breeding program. This presence of analog data is a crack in the foundation of a digital breeding ecosystem and a significant occasion for errors to be introduced that will propagate through the entire breeding program. However, implementing digital cross tracking into breeding programs is difficult due to the non-standardized workflows that different breeders have adopted. Intercross, an open-source Android app, aims to provide scientists with a robust and simple solution for planning, tracking, and managing the crosses being made each season and aims to serve as the primary tool to digitize crossing data for breeding programs. The simplicity and flexibility of Intercross allows rapid and broad adoption by diverse breeding programs and will solidify the concepts of a digital breeding ecosystem.