The Research Data Alliance (RDA) Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) meeting focusing on IGAD/RDA : Sharing Experiences and Creating Digital Dialogues, which was set to be held in Rome (Italy) in April 2020 is now taking place as a virtual meeting which began on, May 25 to May 28.  The virtual meeting will provide an online platform to continue to build upon collaborations, knowledge sharing and developing innovations with activities including panel sessions, group discussions and presentations. 

Today’s session (May 26) focuses on Semantics and will take place from 16:00 to 17:45 CEST. Register here.

A full list of presentations is below:

16:00-16:20CEST

Building global infrastructure for interoperability across the agriculture industry: AgGateway and its Agrisemantics Working Group

Andres Ferreyra, Syngenta Crop Protection LLC 

United States

Abstract: AgGateway is a global nonprofit industry association with a membership of approximately 200 companies. The purpose of AgGateway is to enable digital agriculture by promoting the implementation of data exchange standards, both in supply chain and field operations domains. Examples of supply-chain standards include the Ag eStandards (for communication among manufacturers, distributors and retailers) and AgXML (for grain contracts, transport, settlements, weights and grades). Examples of standards implemented in the field operations space include ISO 11783 and ISO 19156.

16:20-16:40CEST 

Adopting FAIR data principles for long-term agricultural experiments data

Richard Ostler, Rothamsted Research

United Kingdom

Abstract: This presentation will focus on our approach to FAIRifying and publishing this data and the data management and cultural challenges this has raised. The presentation will conclude with future capacity development training in collaboration with the GLTEN and the University of Sokoine, Tanzania, to improve data management skills and access to data across the global long-term agricultural experiments community.

16:40-17:00CEST

AgroPortal: a vocabulary and ontology repository for agronomy

Clement Jonquet, LIRMM, University of Montpellier

France

Abstract: The AgroPortal project, is a community effort started by the Montpellier scientific community (LIRMM, IRD, CIRAD, INRAE, Bioversity International) to build an ontology repository for agronomy and related domains. Our goal is to facilitate the adoption of metadata and semantics to facilitate open science and the production of FAIR data. By enabling straightforward use of ontologies, we expect data managers and researchers to focus on their tasks, without requiring them to deal with the complex engineering work needed for ontology management.

17:00-17:20CEST

AGROVOC: Multischeme, multihierarchy and thesaurus management

Kristin Kolshus, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Italy

Abstract: AGROVOC is edited through the web-based platform VocBench 3, an advanced collaboration environment for maintaining thesauri, ontologies, code lists and authority resources, providing features such as history, validation, a publication workflow, and multi-user management with role-based access control. Specialized concept schemes are now possible within AGROVOC. VocBench 3 supports the use of hierarchical relation properties that are specific to a scheme. 

17:20- 17:40CEST

An overview of data management, processing, and analytical tools and services

Medha Devare (CGIAR)

France

Abstract: COVID-19 has shown that Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data assets are the building blocks for data-driven, collaborative and agile crisis response and resilience over the long term. Responding rapidly and effectively to disruptions in agriculture similarly hinges around enabling discovery of and access to publications, data, and data products that are interpretable and interoperable – for humans and machines. This is also a critical piece of the strategy for enhancing the impact of research and development in the agricultural domain in general, and for catalyzing innovation in our efforts to fuel a “translational agriculture” revolution. There is a strong model in the biomedical sector to achieve seamless discoverability, interlinkages and interoperability across their data resources. Guided by this, CGIAR’s Big Data Platform has developed and/or curated several openly available solutions to enable good data management practices leading to the generation of open and FAIR data assets, along with tools to access them, and an analytical environment and other services to more seamlessly and ethically process and derive insight from data. This talk will provide an overview of these as a response to a potential data gap in this moment of crisis coupled with an increased recognition of the importance of open, human and machine interoperable data through the systematic use of these tools and services.

17:40-17:45CEST

Questions

Registration

Registration for the week-long virtual meeting is still available. The full schedule of presentations and registration links for the virtual meeting are available at https://bit.ly/2AzocoO. Each day has one or two sessions - one in the morning and another one in the afternoon Central European Summer Time (CEST) - with 60 to 90 minutes of presentations. There are  individual registration links for each virtual session. Interested participants are encouraged to register for multiple sessions based on interests and needs. 

The virtual event will include the following sessions:

• Opening Session 16:00 to 17:00 CEST - Register
• Semantics 16:00 to 17:30 CEST - Register
• Europe/Asia 10:00 to 11:45 CEST - Register
• Americas (draft, last details will follow this afternoon) 16:00  to 17:30 CEST - Registration
• Africa 10:00 to 11:30 CEST - Register
• Closure session 16:00 to 17:00 CEST - Register

If you have any comments or suggestions please contact to us at [email protected].

About IGAD

One of IGAD’s main roles is to serve as a platform that leads to the creation of domain-specific Working Groups. To date, successful Working Groups (WGs) have been formed under IGAD, these are: Wheat Data Interoperability, Rice Data Interoperability, AgriSemantics and Capacity Development for Agricultural Data WGs. The groups play a key role in delivering Research Data Alliance’s (RDA) recommendations and good practices with regard to Agricultural Data Interoperability. Formed in 2013, since its inception the Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) has grown in community strength to over 200 members, becoming one of the RDA’s most prominent Thematic Groups.

Co-chairs of the Interest Group on Agriculture Data (IGAD), for the IGAD Task Force 2020:

Patricia Rocha Bello Bertin (EMBRAPA, Brazil)

Cynthia Parr (National Agricultural Library. USDA Agricultural Research Service, US)

Imma Subirats Coll (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy)