Should the Germplasm Clearing House Mechanism (GCHM) be a consortium of genebanks and other institutes involved in the conservation of germplasm?
Should the GCHM provide an index of global accession level passport data? (GBIF style index)
Should the GCHM provide a forum for collaborative development of standards and tools to access global information on germplasm? (TDWG style consortium)
Should the GCHM provide tools to access global information on germplasm? (data harvest desktop software for download)
Suggested activities/outputs
Global unique IDs and a system to resolve metadata from the GUID (LSID)
Taxonomic name service (synonyms, resolution of taxon concepts, etc...)
Inventory of germplasm collecting missions
Inventory of collecting events (collecting number, location, time, collecting mission)
Inventory of commercial cultivars (breeding company, names, release year...)
Inventory of breeding events (cultivars, landraces)
Global index of conserved germplasm accessions (fixed release of a index download version, every month, every 6 month...?)
Inventory of donor events (?)
Inventory of regeneration events (?)
Inventory of germplasm distribution events (?)
Inventory of institutes and persons (complement and collaborate with the WIEWS db?)
...
NB! many of these activities need close collaboration with WIEWS to avoid dupplication of efforts.
