A tool to explore breeding material

[nicollas]

Hi,

I've just created a little tool to try to improve quest for breeding materials using flickr and google maps. My initial need is to find material more cold resistant using latitude and elevation. But this tool can be used for other purposes, for example seeing bioregions where the specy naturally grows (or is cultivated). I hope it will be useful to some, if so i would be very pleased to know how or for what purposes.

www.permaculture.eu.org/breeder-gatherer

Just enter your search, combining common and/or scientific name, adding seeds/flowers/fruits if you are interested in a particular feature. The main limitations are the number of photos geo tagged in flickr (now more material support automatic geo-encoding) and the accuracy of google elevation service (when there is no elevation it is because google reference point for calculation is 100m or further).

Dont hesitate to report any bugs, it is not extensively tested.

Some examples :
www.permaculture.eu.org/breeder-gatherer/?name=crambe+maritime
www.permaculture.eu.org/breeder-gatherer/?name=Chamaecytisus+Proliferus

[starry]

Awesome!

[nicollas]

Thanks,

too bad i've exceeded the limitation for google elevation api so no elevation until tomorrow !

[trixtrax]

This is a really interesting project, following keenly. Awesome work!

[darrenabbey]

Any recent work on this project? I find the idea interesting, but my personal testing hasn't come up with much.

[nicollas]

Well it seems to doesnt work anymore, some pb of identification i guess, i will check that thanks

[nicollas]

darrenabbey The site is working now. I've still got some problems to get the elevation and i'll fix that later.

(it would be much more useful plugged on a database like ARS GRIN but they dont provide an API or access query yet)

[darrenabbey]

Nice! I can definitely see this as being useful.

GRIN does have a web interface that could be scraped for info (http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/swish/accboth?query=Phaseolus+coccineus&submit=Submit+Text+Query&si=0). Many of the results have a location specific enough be of use, but the results are in natural language that may take some work to interpret effectively.

Also, some text on the site describing what the tool is doing, even simply a copy of the post heading this thread, would be handy (for the scenario where I sent someone the url).    ...though really, if more people knew what the tool was, it would be more likely that the google elevation api would get saturated.  So, maybe not.