Track material and locations

Create locations, plant material into them, and keep the quantity and the moves on the record.

A location is a place that holds plants, and a material is a quantity of an accession at one location. This page describes both records, the values their fields take, and the history Sepal keeps as material moves.

Creating, editing, moving, archiving, and deleting material and locations needs the editor or admin role. A reader who opens a material or a location sees a read-only page that holds its panel, without the form or the tabs.

Create a location

Every material is filed in a location, so add the location before you plant anything into it.

Select Locations in the sidebar.
Select Create.
Enter a Name, such as Greenhouse 2. The name is what you call the place.
Enter a Code, such as GH2. The code is the short form that appears beside material in lists.
Enter a Description if the name needs explaining. The field is optional.
Select Save.

Both the name and the code are required, and each has to be at least two characters. Add one location for each place you want to tell apart, down to the shelf if you want to know which shelf a plant is on.

Edit a location

Open a location from the Locations list. The General tab holds the same three fields as the create form. Change what you need and select Save, or select Cancel to reload the record as it was.

A material refers to its location and does not keep a copy of the name, so renaming a location changes what every material in it reports.

Archive or delete a location

A location that has ever held material cannot be deleted, because the material history names it as the place plants moved from or to. Archive it instead.

Open the location and stay on the General tab.
Select Actions, then select Archive.
Select Archive in the confirmation.

Sepal refuses to archive a location that still holds material, so move the material somewhere else first. An archived location keeps its place in the history, and it no longer appears in the Locations list or in the Location field of the material form. To list archived locations, search for archived:true. To bring one back, open it, select Actions, and select Restore.

Delete in the same menu removes a location that holds no material, appears in no material’s history, and is not named by a propagation. You cannot undo a delete.

Create material

Start from the location when the accession already names it as its Intended location:

Select Locations in the sidebar and open the location.
Open the Awaiting planting section of the panel.
Select Plant here beside the accession. The material form opens with Accession and Code already filled in.

To start from the accession, open it, select Actions, and select Add material. To start from nothing, select Material in the sidebar, select Create, and choose the accession in the Accession field.

Then fill in the rest of the form:

Under Identity, check the Code. Sepal fills it in with the next code for the accession once the accession is set. Sepal identifies a material by the accession code and the material code together, so a code as short as 1 is enough.
Choose the Location you are planting into. When the accession has an intended location, the hint under the field names it.
Under Holding, set the Quantity to the number of seeds or plants this material holds. A new material has to start with at least one.
Set Status and Type.
Select Save.

When part of an accession goes somewhere else, create a second material for it. For example, twenty seeds sown into two greenhouses are recorded as two materials.

Choose a type and a status

Type records what the material is. It takes one of plant, seed, vegetative, tissue, and other. Set it to what you are holding now, not to what the material will become.

Status records what became of the material. It takes one of alive, dead, dormant, transferred, other, and unknown. A material that is alive, dormant, or unknown is current and can hold any number of plants. A material that is dead, transferred, or other is no longer current, and Sepal requires its quantity to be zero. Set the quantity to zero in the same save that changes the status.

Change the quantity

When the number of plants changes, record the change with a reason.

Select Material in the sidebar and open the material.
On the General tab, set Quantity to the new number.
Set Reason for change. The field lists Dead, Deleted, year dead unknown, Did not germinate, Discarded, Discarded seedling, Discarded, weedy, Distributed elsewhere, Divided, Error correction, Given away, Lost, whereabouts unknown, Other, Stolen, Summer kill, Transferred elsewhere, and Winter kill. It starts on None.
Select Save.

Sepal stores the reason on the history entry, not on the material. It records the reason only when the quantity or the location actually changed. A save that changes neither records nothing, whatever the reason field says.

Move material to another location

To move a whole material:

Open the material and stay on the General tab.
Change Location to the new place.
Set Reason for change.
Select Save.

To split a material between two locations, reduce the first and create the second:

Open the material, reduce Quantity to the number that stays, set a Reason for change, and select Save.
Select Material in the sidebar, then select Create.
Choose the same Accession, and choose the Location the plants moved to.
Enter the Quantity that moved, set Status and Type, and select Save.

The second material carries its own code, so you can count the two lots separately.

Read the change history

The History section of the material’s panel lists the changes, newest first. Each entry shows the date and time, the change in quantity as a signed number, the move, and the reason if you set one. A move reads as the old location and the new one. A change with no move reads as quantity change.

The section shows the three most recent entries. When there are more, a Show all button lists the rest.

Sepal writes a history entry when a material moves between locations or its quantity changes. Creating a material does not write one, and neither does changing only its code, its type, or its status.

Delete material

Open the material, select Actions, and select Delete. Sepal refuses to delete a material that a propagation names as its parent plant. Deleting a material also removes its history, its observations, and its tags, and it unlinks its media. You cannot undo a delete.

How a location relates to its material

A location holds material, not accessions. Open a location and its panel shows the following sections:

Statistics counts the materials in the location and links to them in the Material list.
Awaiting planting lists the accessions whose Intended location is this place and which have nothing planted here yet. Each row carries a Plant here link. An accession leaves the section as soon as it has material in the location.
Moved lists the material that has left this location, newest first, with the date and the place it went to.
Propagation lists the propagations running in this location.

To see everything currently in a location, filter the Material list by the location code.

location.code:GH2 status:alive