The FAO AGROVOC team is pleased to announce the release for AGROVOC release for September 2019. The September 2019 release brings AGROVOC to a total of 36,491 concepts and 735,8005 terms, in up to 36 languages. Many thanks to those who contributed. The current release improved AGROVOC in a number of ways, including quality control and correcting alignments with other linked vocabularies. The next release should be in the first days of October 2019.

Detailed technical information about the current release can be browsed here.

The following services have been updated

• SPARQL Endpoint:  http://agrovoc.uniroma2.it:3030/agrovoc/sparql
• Void file: http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/void.ttl
• WS : http://agrovoc.uniroma2.it:8080/SKOSWS/services/SKOSWS
• SKOSMOS Data : http://agrovoc.uniroma2.it/agrovoc/agrovoc/en/
• AGROVOC AIMS Pages: http://aims.fao.org/agrovoc/releases

AGROVOC data can be accessed in different ways depending on the user needs. Editors use VocBench3 to edit AGROVOC. AGROVOC human users consult mainly SKOSMOS GUI to search concepts and navigate the hierarchy. Legacy tools still interact with SOAP Web Services. Automatic tools consult SKOSMOS APIs, URI resolution or SPARQL endpoint. Users having network limitations or specific requirements may prefer to download the entire release and load it in their own tool. 

AGROVOC is used worldwide. The recent statistics for January-August 2019 are as follows, over 14.9 million hits:

• AGROVOC statistics Loddy (URI resolution): 11,833,990 accesses
• AGROVOC downloads: 13,647
• AGROVOC Webservices: 275,442 accesses
• AGROVOC SKOSMOS: 2,870,088

Some useful URLs

• SKOSMOS - to browse  http://agrovoc.uniroma2.it/agrovoc/agrovoc/en/
• AIMS  page on AGROVOC  http://aims.fao.org/agrovoc/

A helpful tip for doing some searches in SKOSMOS: SKOSMOS searches only in concepts having a label starting with the input value. So, if you search for "regis" you will find, for example "registration" and "registered designation of origin", but not "deed registration". If you want to search for all concepts having a label containing such input value, you need to put  *  before and after, so, for example, you can input *regis* and you will get many more results.

Some of the ways AGROVOC is used

• to index electronic information resources, e.g. in specialized libraries as well as digital libraries and repositories;
• for text mining and to tag content in websites, e.g. integrating AGROVOC as a taxonomy of Typo 3 or Drupal;
• to facilitate search engine discovery;
• as a reference for translations;
• to linking datasets and enhancing access to open data;
• in data modeling;
• as a reliable source for standardization of agricultural information data and services

If you need to suggest a new concept and are not an AGROVOC Editor, please remember that this can also be done by email to [email protected]. Please send the suggested new concept in English, with any translations available, suggested broader term if possible, and the definition with source  (the more information, the better). It will then be reviewed. Templates available.

We want AGROVOC to be useful and relevant for your work.  If you need more information, please write to [email protected]  and we will do our best to help.