Platforms

The platform describes the general chemistry used to generate marker genotyping data. Examples of platforms are KASP, Illumina, etc. All markers must be associated with a platform.

There are several considerations for defining platforms.

• Consistency of data generated: the expectation is that within each platform, the genotyping data generated by a marker name should give generally consistent results to allow for future composite scores by marker. A marker that generates data using a different chemistry can give different results and should be placed in a separate platform.
• Avoiding unnecessary duplication of marker names:  if five different sequencing methods each produce the same or overlapping marker names that give equivalent genotyping scores, they should all be placed under a single platform. For example, "Sequencing," and the five methods described using protocols. 
• Extract requirements: one of the primary extract use-cases is by platform, and so consider how the user will want to extract data; they will likely want to separate gel-based codominant data from sequence generated data.