GRIN-Global

Seed of the National Plant Germplasm System in foil bags in its cold storage vault at Fort Collins, Colorado, in 2013.

Seed of the National Plant Germplasm System in foil bags in its cold storage vault at Fort Collins, Colorado, in 2013.

GRIN-Global

Database

Kept by	National Plant Germplasm System
First published	2015
Version	2.3.12
What it holds	Genebank accessions

Entries

Entries	619,235
Cannabis entries	873
Counted	13 November 2026

Use

Data licence	Public domain
Access	Open
Website	npgsweb.ars-grin.gov

GRIN-Global is the online catalogue of the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS), the network of gene banks of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The name also covers the open-source software on which the catalogue runs. It grew out of the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN), which ARS began to develop in the mid-1980s. Gene banks in other countries run their own copies of the software. On 12 November 2026 the catalogue held 619,235 accessions of 16,766 species. A search of the genus Cannabis on 13 November returned 873 of them.

Origins

GRIN was the information system that ARS built for its germplasm collections from the mid-1980s and used until 2015. The Crop Trust and the USDA began the GRIN-Global project in 2008, with Bioversity International also taking part. The project set out to build a new version of GRIN that any crop gene bank could adopt. The system was to need no licence fees and to work with PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle databases. Passport, phenotype and molecular marker data were to move in and out as spreadsheets. Bioversity was to document the system in Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish, translate its interface and install it in developing countries.

The first version was released in December 2011. It has been free to any gene bank since that year. ARS wrote the software and Bioversity coordinated testing and comments from gene banks in other countries. The work was paid for by ARS and by a large grant from the Crop Trust. ARS moved the NPGS collections onto GRIN-Global in November 2015.

Other gene banks

Each gene bank that adopts GRIN-Global runs its own copy. The copies are not linked to one another. Staff manage the collection through a curator tool and a search tool. A public website lets outside users search the catalogue where the gene bank chooses to open one. The project lists public sites of the gene banks of CIMMYT, the International Potato Center, IRRI, ICRISAT, IITA and ILRI. National gene banks in Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Tunisia and the United Kingdom also run public sites, as does a shared system of the Nordic and Baltic gene banks.

Gene banks that run GRIN-Global often send their passport data on to Genesys, the Crop Trust's portal to gene bank collections. In 2016 the Crop Trust was testing a one-step transfer from GRIN-Global to Genesys with CIMMYT, the USDA and the national programmes of Portugal and the Czech Republic. The Crop Trust also coordinates GRIN-Global Community Edition (GGCE), open-source software that follows on from GRIN-Global and adds barcoding and the use of hand-held devices. The 11 CGIAR gene banks of the Genebank Platform installed test versions of it.

An accession in the catalogue

A GRIN-Global accession record gives the taxon, the place of origin, the site that keeps the accession, the date the system received it and its improvement status. The record then lists the seed that can be ordered and any limits on shipping, then the source history with collectors and donors, other names and numbers, a narrative and, for some accessions, images, a pedigree and observations. Observations are values measured in a named study. The hemp accession G 33751 carries those of a 2024 study by the ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit and HudsonAlpha, which grew 536 accessions in three replicates at the ARS Wellington Farm and set out to genotype two XX and two XY plants per accession from most of the hemp collection, 1,101 genomes in all. The values it recorded include cannabinoid contents in per cent of dry weight.

Requests for seed are placed through a shopping cart on the website. The system supplies germplasm to professional plant breeders and research scientists. Germplasm is not supplied for home or community gardening or for school projects.

Licence

ARS lists both GRIN and the GRIN-Global project in the United States government's data catalogue under the public-domain label of the federal government. The USDA has dedicated the software to the public. Anyone may use, copy, modify, publish and distribute it, provided the notice stays with every copy.

Cannabis accessions

Of the 873 Cannabis entries on 13 November 2026, 703 were numbered in the G series and 170 in the PI series. The Plant Genetic Resources Unit at Geneva, New York, whose site code is NE9, kept 696. Eighteen were vouchers in the Plant Variety Protection collection. The other 159 were historic entries. Ninety-one of the 873 could be ordered. All but two were filed under Cannabis sativa L. One was filed under subsp. sativa and one under subsp. indica.

See also

• Gene bank
• GBIF
• Genesys
• National Plant Germplasm System