AIMS

AgBioData ensures Standards and Best Practices for acquisition, display and retrieval of Genomic, Genetic & Breeding Data

Given that agricultural research depends basically on data and analysis, governmental agencies, publishers and science funders now require data management plans for publicly funded experiments. This, along with the sheer volume of agricultural biological data being produced today makes good data management essential.

In 2015,  AgBioData - a consortium of agricultural biological databases -  was formed to identify common goals relating to data set acquisition, display, user retrieval and manipulation; data (storage and sharing), software and hardware standards, and database best practices that would have the most efficient impact on agriculture (research) agendas, through more efficient database solutions. 

THE OBJECTIVES OF AGBIODATA INCLUDE:

1.) to coordinate with external (to-date, 32) groups/data providers including Agbase, AgroPortal, CyVerse and scientific journals to develop standards for efficient data flow among data generators and databases,

2.) to encourage authentic, detailed, accurate and explicit communication and sharing among databases of agricultural data in order to identify common problems and collaborate on solving them, as well as to avoid duplication of work and support small research groups,

3.) to promote AgBioData database products referenced into the FAIRsharing registry <https://fairsharing.org/collection/AgBioData> in order to enhance support for more reliable insights into findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) datasets. 

As a step toward these goals, the AgriBioData Team presents the current state of biocuration, ontologies, metadata and persistence, database platforms, programmatic (machine) access to data, communication and sustainability with regard to data curation:

AgBioData consortium recommendations for sustainable genomics and genetics databases for agriculture.

The purpose of this paper is 3-fold:

1.) to document the current challenges and opportunities of GGB (genomic, genetic and breeding) databases and online resources regarding the collection, integration and provision of data in a standardized way;

2.) to outline a set of standards and best practices for GGB databases and their curators;

3.) to inform policy and decision makers about the growing importance of scientific data curation and management to the research community.

The publication is divided into seven sections and each section contains an (i) Overview, (ii) Challenges and (iii) Recommendations.

1. Biocuration

2. Ontologies

3. Metadata and persistence

4. GGB database platforms

5. Programmatic access to data

6. Communication

7. Sustainability

RELATED: 

Submit an ABSTRACT at the IGAD RDA 13th pre-meeting (1 April 2019): 'AGRICULTURE DATA INTEROPERABILITY: Opportunities and Lessons Learnt from Sharing and Re-Using Data' (Deadline : 22 February 2019)

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