The International Potato Centre (CIP) seems to have a new, AI-powered (of course) interface for requesting material from its genebank. They call it Crops·To·Go.
You have to register even if all you want to do is browse the collection. It didn’t take me very long to do so, but still: why? Requiring users to create an account before they can explore what is available seems an unnecessary barrier.
I was also not entirely convinced that all the search filters were working as expected. In particular, as I added evaluation-data filters, the number of accessions that purported to match them remained unchanged. It wasn’t clear whether the filters had been applied, whether they had returned no additional matches, or whether the matching count was simply not updating. Some more visible feedback on the effect of applying filters would make the experience a bit more reassuring.
Overall, this looks like a promising step towards making CIP’s germplasm more accessible, but the browsing experience and the transparency of the filtering process could do with some attention.