At the IGAD/RDA 14 Plenary Meeting at the University of Helsinki (Finland), the Agricultural Data Interest Group (IGAD) agreed to start a webinar series to enable high quality presentations and discussions to happen even if we cannot all be together in person at RDA. The Agricultural Data Interest Group (IGAD) exists to facilitate coordination and progress among a community of international data experts.  These webinars will allow us keep up with cutting edge developments in agricultural data, and will encourage the free flow of ideas.

Watch: Webinar: Collaborative Open Plant Omics (COPO): Extending the frontiers of “FAIR” Data in Agriculture as part of the Research Data Alliance's (RDA)/ Agricultural Data Interest Group's (IGAD) ongoing webinar series. The webinar featured Anthony Etuk, Research Software Engineer of the Davey Group, Earlham Institute, Norwich, United Kingdom and was held on February 12.

Throughout the webinar, participants learned more about the Collaborative Open Plant Omics (COPO), which is a system that attempts to address some of these challenges by enabling scientists to describe their data and research objects using community-sanctioned metadata, and then use public or institutional repositories to share it with the wider scientific community. Data generators are encouraged to use rich semantic metadata when publishing research objects, thus allowing data consumers and tools to find, aggregate, and analyse data which was previously invisible or not shared at all. 

For more information or to learn more about future webinars, visit aims.fao.org.