TreeScribe Privacy Policy

Updated October 7, 2026

TreeScribe is a field data collection app for perennial crop breeding programs. Access is by invitation only: a person can use the app only with an access code issued by the organization running their breeding program. TreeScribe is operated by the Savanna Institute.

What the app records, and where it goes

The app records what you deliberately enter while working in a trial: phenotype scores, notes, photos, harvest records, measurements made at the lab bench, and surveyed plant positions. Everything you record is stored on your device so the app works offline, and syncs to a Google Drive owned by your organization, where it becomes part of your organization's breeding records. Your access code identifies you as the observer on the records you create, so your organization knows who recorded what. We do not operate any server that keeps a copy of your data; the app's server relays your records to your organization's Google Drive and retains nothing.

Your database sign-in

The app reads trial and plant information from your organization's plant breeding database, a BrAPI-compatible server, using your own account there. Your password is stored only on your device, and then only if you ask to stay signed in.

When you sign in, your password passes through our own server on its way to your database. That step exists because the database will not accept a sign-in sent straight from a browser on another site. Our server uses it for that one request and keeps no copy of it, in a log or anywhere else, and it is sent to no one but the database you chose.

The app itself never writes to your database. Our separate desktop review console does, when somebody at your organization reviews what was collected and chooses to write it, and it does so under their own database account and their own permissions.

Location, camera, microphone, and Bluetooth

The app uses your location, while you are using it, to find the plant you are standing near and to record where each record was made: a surveyed plant, a photograph, a bur count, or a spoken note. It uses the camera and photo library for the plant photos you take, and the microphone for a spoken note you choose to record, which is filed with the trial as audio and is not transcribed. It uses Bluetooth to read position and quality data from a GNSS survey receiver when you connect one, and keeps that connection while the phone is locked so a survey can continue. Uploads of what you recorded can also continue while the phone is locked. None of this is used for anything except the records you create.

At the lab bench, the TreeScribe lab app can enter the number you say into the measurement field you have chosen, if you turn listening on. Your browser does the recognizing: Chrome sends the audio to Google's speech service and returns the words, and neither the app nor we keep a recording. Listening stops when you turn it off.

No tracking

TreeScribe contains no analytics, no advertising, and no trackers. We do not sell, share, or monetize any data. Records belong to the organization whose trial they were collected in.

Deleting your data

Deleting the TreeScribe app removes everything it stored on your phone, including photographs and recordings that were never sent.

Records you sent are kept in the Google Drive of the breeding program whose staff issued your access code: photographs, spoken notes, written notes, scores, counts and survey points, with your name and, where the phone had one, the position where each was recorded. They are part of that trial's research records and are kept as long as the trial's data are kept.

To have your records deleted or your access code revoked, email info@treescribe.app with your name and the trials you worked on. The program's data stewards will revoke your code and delete the photographs, recordings and notes you sent. Measurements that have already been reviewed into the program's breeding database are research observations of the plants, and they are kept.

For any other question about this policy, write to the same address.