At the RDA launch meeting, March 18-20,  an "Agricultural Data Interestgroup"  was founded. The initial members were from India, France, Greece and FAO of the United Nations.

Figure 1. Slide that shows the RDA mechanims

The "Agricultural Data Interestgroup" will discuss and pursue all topics related to management and interoperability of data sets which are  important for agricultural development and innovation. The domain interest group will represent all stakeholders producing, managing, aggregating, sharing or consuming data from/for agricultural research & innovation. It will

• bring existing problems and experiences on the table
• pave the way for a number of domain specific Working Groups within RDA
• serve other othe Working Groups as a domain case

The Interestgroup will link from RDA to domain specific initiatives like the CIARD movement. The Interestgroup is considering to establish as its first working group a "working group on interoperability of  Wheet related information systems" in line with the wheatinitiative ( Wheat represents a case of complex data interoperability issues combining Germplams data, with genetic and phenotypic data, statistical data, bibliographical data and more.

An expected outcome of this workinggroup should  be a "cookbook on exposing and linking wheat related databases/repositories. 

The "Agricultural Data Interestgroup"  will contact in the next weeks all important stakeholders to establish this collaboration within RDA.  Regarding a possible working group on wheat data, this too will be discussed with the main initiatives in that area.