Many plant breeders and geneticists analyze their datasets using the R statistical programming language, but this requires the import of data into an R environment. BrAPI enables access to pull datasets into R from compatible databases, but API backend processes, such as authentication, tokens, TCP/IP protocol, JSON format, pagination, stateless calls, asynchronous communication, and database IDs are complex for users to navigate. The QBMS R package eliminates technical barriers scientists experience when using the BrAPI specification in their analysis scripts and pipelines by providing breeders with stateful functions familiar to them when navigating their GUI systems [@doi:10.5281/zenodo.10791627]. QBMS enables users to query and extract data into a dataframe, a common structure in the R language, providing an intuitive connection with breeding data management systems.
The community has built extended solutions on top of QBMS, incorporating the package into R-Shiny BrAPPs such as Mr.Bean [@doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1290078] (described below). QBMS is open-source and available on the official CRAN repository, where it has garnered over 9400 downloads.