The Potato Pedigree Database System Design Based On Visual Basic

Potato is the forth major crop only less than rice, wheat, corn in the world with high-yield, high-starch characteristics. It's also the most important non-cereal food in the world. It has become an important part in global food system, because it exists in about 100 countries all around the world. Before breeding a new cultivar, a lot of field work should be done to choose the suitable one. The efficiency is relatively low, and the difficulty is determined by the special nature of potato.Pedigree, a kind of diagram, recorded the kin as an important signal among the members of family. Pedigree analysis can begin with determining the relationship in the family tree, it is one of the most important methods to research biological heredity.The potato pedigree database system is consists of two major parts, one part is the potato pedigree database made by Access database software, another part is the software system made by Visual basic. The information of the database contains more than 5,000 cultivars, including name, parents, picture and instruction. Each name is arranged by the order of the first letter. The software system's main functions are search, pedigree display, print, instruction, clean, quit, load, and renew. Each feature in the software match a function button, and each button match a section of Visual basic procedures. By clicking the button the procedure will be activated, the information will be loaded form the database, and displayed in the diagram. This system fixes search, pedigree display and renew together. It supplies a nice platform for the potato resource management.Selecting the right parents is the most important work in horticultural crop breeding such as potato and grape. The potato pedigree database system can display the relationship among the members of family. It is a new way to make the horticultural crop breeding combined with computer science. Although the object of study is potato, the system also can be popularized to other crops, such as grape, watermelon and pear.