Sepal

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.

Create a location

Add the location before you plant anything into it. Sepal will not let you create material in a location that does not exist yet.

  1. Select Locations in the sidebar.
  2. Select Create.
  3. Enter a Name, such as Greenhouse 2. The name is what you call the place.
  4. Enter a Code, such as GH2. The code is the short form that appears beside material in lists.
  5. Enter a Description if the name needs explaining. The field is optional.
  6. 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. An editor sees the same three fields as the create form, and a reader sees the summary panel instead. Change what you need and select Save, or select Cancel to reload the record as it was.

The app has no control that deletes a location. A material refers to its location rather than carrying a copy of the name, so renaming a location changes what every material in it reports.

Create material

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

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

Otherwise, select Material in the sidebar, select Create, and choose the accession in the Accession field.

Either way, fill in the rest of the form:

  1. Under Identity, enter a Code. Sepal identifies a material by the accession code and the material code together, so a code as short as 1 is enough.
  2. Check that Location names the place you are planting into.
  3. 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.
  4. Set Status and Type.
  5. Select Save.

Create a second material for the same accession whenever part of it goes somewhere else. Twenty seeds sown into two greenhouses are 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 rather than to what the material will become.

Status records what became of the material. It takes one of alive, dead, dormant, transferred, other, and unknown. Sepal splits the six into two groups. 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 has to have a quantity of zero, because a lot that is no longer current cannot hold plants. Reduce the quantity in the same save that changes the status.

Some search filters offer only alive and dead as status choices. Those two values are a shorthand for the search rather than the complete list.

Change the quantity

Record a change in the app rather than editing the number and moving on. Sepal writes a history row for the change and keeps it on the record.

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

The reason is stored on the history row rather than on the material, so it is recorded 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:

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

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

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

The second material carries its own code, so the accession now has two lots you can count 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, and a Show all button appears when there are more.

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 its code, its type, or its status on its own.

How a location relates to its material

A location holds material rather than holding accessions. Open a location and its panel reports three things.

  • 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.

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

location.code:GH2 status:alive