MOTIVATION: The AGENT project established a network of actively cooperating European genebanks, integrating genomic and phenotypic data from accessions of wheat and barley. Due to specific storage demands for phenotypic and genotypic data, the project used separate database instances and backend technologies to manage integrated phenotypic and genotypic data. RESULTS: We discuss the challenges encountered when integrating dispersed data to serve through a single interface such as the Plant Breeding Application Programming Interface, BrAPI. We examine how the consistent mappability of genebank data to the BrAPI model can enable the implementation of effective services. The advantages of BrAPI in transparently linking distributed data entities through embedded, unique identifiers are highlighted. We present a technical solution involving a BrAPI proxy, which combines and merges separate BrAPI endpoints. Finally, we demonstrate the AGENT BrAPI implementation with an illustrative example that validates a suggested SNP for a trait from the literature by linking phenotypic, genotypic and passport data. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The BrAPI proxy implementation and documentation is available at the Python Package Index (https://pypi.org/project/brapi-proxy) and archived in Zenodo (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.19436445). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: A Jupyter Notebook file for the validation example using a marker-trait relationship found in the literature.

BACKGROUND: Many attempts are being made to understand biological subjects at a systems level. A major resource for these approaches are biological databases, storing manifold information about DNA, RNA and protein sequences including their functional and structural motifs, molecular markers, mRNA expression levels, metabolite concentrations, protein-protein interactions, phenotypic traits or taxonomic relationships. The use of these databases is often hampered by the fact that they are designed for special application areas and thus lack universality. Databases on metabolic pathways, which provide an increasingly important foundation for many analyses of biochemical processes at a systems level, are no exception from the rule. Data stored in central databases such as KEGG, BRENDA or SABIO-RK is often limited to read-only access. If experimentalists want to store their own data, possibly still under investigation, there are two possibilities. They can either develop their own information system for managing that own data, which is very time-consuming and costly, or they can try to store their data in existing systems, which is often restricted. Hence, an out-of-the-box information system for managing metabolic pathway data is needed. RESULTS: We have designed META-ALL, an information system that allows the management of metabolic pathways, including reaction kinetics, detailed locations, environmental factors and taxonomic information. Data can be stored together with quality tags and in different parallel versions. META-ALL uses Oracle DBMS and Oracle Application Express. We provide the META-ALL information system for download and use. In this paper, we describe the database structure and give information about the tools for submitting and accessing the data. As a first application of META-ALL, we show how the information contained in a detailed kinetic model can be stored and accessed. CONCLUSION: META-ALL is a system for managing information about metabolic pathways. It facilitates the handling of pathway-related data and is designed to help biochemists and molecular biologists in their daily research. It is available on the Web at http://bic-gh.de/meta-all and can be downloaded free of charge and installed locally.