1. Mack Shen USDA-ARS NCRPIS GEM - December 9, 2015 -
GEM IT Report
Mack Shen
USDA-ARS NCRPIS GEM
- December 9,
Now, I’m going to give the GEM IT report.

2. Usage of GEM-Ames website
World Map of Cumulative Visitors
First, I’m going to talk about the usage of the GEM website. This colorful map shows the locations of the last 100 visitors by last Friday. Each dot shows a location of a visitor and the red one is the very last one, which was me when I queried this map.

3. Usage of GEM-Ames website
Top 10 countries with the most visitors
Here is top 10 countries with the most visitors last year. As you might remember, I’ve showed this list before. Comparing to the previous one, this list has a few new countries, which are France, Brazil, and Argentina.

4. Usage of GEM-Ames website
Top 10 regions/states with the most visitors
Top 10 regions/states with the most visitors last year. I’m glad to point out that only one foreign region, Beijing, is on this list. There were usually 3 to 4 foreign regions on this list, which means more and more American researchers visited our website.

5. Usage of GEM-Ames website
Top 20 keywords used for searching for GEM website
I hope what I just said was true. To find out, I checked the top 20 keywords people used for searching for the GEM website. As you can see that most people came to our website for the business (you know that by looking at the keywords you used), except the third one, yes. I used both Bing and Google with the keyword “yes” to search and both led me to the Yes Rock Band, but I couldn’t go from there to the GEM website. I don’t know why the keyword of yes is on this list. Maybe, my Internet skill needs some improvement.

6. Information request form (raw data)
Plant and harvest dates
Location: county, state
Plot size (width x length – button-to-button)
Desired stand count
Plot condition (optional, but preferred)
Before talking about the data, I’d like to talk about the information exchanges. There are quite a few companies running yield trials for GEM project. People are cooperative sending me the data at their earliest convenience and I really appreciate that. However, because of the personnel changes, new people are on board at some places. So, I’d like to mention the info I need.
EXPT
Entry
Pedigree
Plot
Rep WT
Yield
MOIST
TWT
PLTHT
EARHT
STAND
SKLDG
RTLDG
DEARS

7. GEM-Ames trial summary
I’d like to show a few charts about the trials as a summary. Here is the first one. As you can see that averagely, we have 16,000 yield trial plots in recent years.

8. GEM-Ames trial summary
(The beginning and now.) This chart shows the percentage of plots run by GEM and GEM cooperators. I started making this graph over 10 years ago. At that time, I wondered if we could run 50% of the yield trial plots some day. Now, we ran a little over 80% this year. In year 1996, we only ran about 10% of the plots. Which way is good? I don’t know.

9. GEM-Ames trial summary
(Timing of the pipeline.) This charts shows the numbers of yield trials GEM has each year. As you can see that we usually have about 40 to 50 experiments in recent years.

10. GEM-Ames trial summary
This chart is composed by percentage data, which is calculated by the number of entries that beat the check mean / by total entry numbers.
You might wonder if it is a linear or exponential. No matter what it is, this graph clearly shows we have more and more good stuff each year.

11. GEM-Ames trial summary - 2015
Summary by experiment for “quick view” on page 10 of the yield trial section
Now, it’s time to talk about this year’s trials. There is a trial summary on page 10 of this booklet for the quick view.

12. GEM-Ames trial summary - 2015
Experiments: 40
Replicated at 4 to 8 locations
Plots: 16,710
The number of complete experiments lost: 0
The number of total reps lost: 39 (17.0%)

13. It shows the reps lost each year due to whatever reasons
It shows the reps lost each year due to whatever reasons. As you can see that this year is the second worst year.

14. GEM-Ames trial summary - 2015
There are 482 top crosses that out-performed the mean yield of 11 checks (15.4% of 3140 entries of the top crosses)
Of these 482 GEM top crosses, 401 were from the first year tests and 81 from the retest
The range of CV’s for yield was from 6.2 to 18.2% ( % last year ) and the mean of the CV’s is 11.7% (last year 10.0%)
Now, it comes the good news.

15. GEM-Ames trial summary
Here is how I made this graph. We have CV for each experiment and means of CV’s for all the experiments each year. I used all of these means of CV’s to get the total mean (which is mean of the mean). Then subtract CV mean of each year from this total mean to get the deviations. The positive deviation indicates the larger CV means for that year and negative indicates the smaller CV means. So we had a best CV means last year, but this year’s is not bad at all, still better than average.

16. Special Thanks to the Companies Conducted Yield Trial In-Kind Support (2015)
Illinois Foundation Seeds, Inc.
KMR Inc.
Monsanto Company
Wyffels Hybrids
AgReliant Genetics, LLC
Beck’s Superior Hybrids, Inc.
CRD Advisors, LLC
DKD Genetics
Here is a list of companies who ran the yield trial as in-kind support for us. We really appreciate their support. DKD and CRD are the first two companies sending me the trial data this year.
Another thing, I’d like to mention, is the list. When I started making this slide quite a few years ago, I had to use two columns to list all the companies. Now, I really don’t need two columns. I understand that it is partially due to the company merges, but still wish more and more companies will be on this list in the future.

17. Last, but not the least, here is a chart showing the number of the people who came to this meeting each year. We appreciate your participation and hope more and more people will come to this GEM meeting in the future.

18. The End

19. Usage of GEM-Ames website
Cumulative Visitors’ Map
People from 60 countries have visited our website last year. The four countries with the most visitors are US, France, India, and China

20. Usage of GEM-Ames website
Top Ten Operating System used
There are 107 OS not shown according to the tracking system.

21. GEM-Ames Data on Website
Corn images for GEM-Ames released lines (in PDF format):
70 images as a total (from yr 05 to 12)
Observation data of breeding crosses: year 2009 to 2012
Characterization data: year 2006 to 2012
Disease data from year 2007 to 2013
Lab NIR data and DSC data
Yield trial data from 1999 to 2013

22. GEM-Ames trial summary - 2014
Timing of the pipeline