The document summarizes discussions from a pre-meeting of the RDA Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) in preparation for the 6th RDA Plenary Session. Key topics discussed included increasing participation in agricultural data activities within RDA, improving data access and interoperability through standards, and potential collaborations. A joint session with the Wheat Data Initiative working group provided updates on their guidelines, portal, and projects including training activities. The IGAD group aims to identify priority topics and foster partnerships to advance open data practices in agricultural research.

1. Session Agricultural Data Interest Group
“Results of the IGAD Pre-Meeting RDA P6: moving forward”
6th RDA Plenary Session
Paris (France)
23th September 2015

2. IGAD
 Interest Group on Agricultural Data
 Inception at RDA1 at Gothenburg, Sweden
 Meetings at every RDA
 Members from 5 continents
 Wheat Data Initiative Working Group
 Joint Session on Thursday from 15:30 – 17:00
 Museum Conference Room

3. Objectives
 Promotion of good practices in the research
domain, like data sharing policies, data
management plan, data interoperability
 Platform for networking and cross-fertilization of
research ideas in data management and
interoperability
 Promotion of interactions and projects among
the major international institutions and groups
worldwide which work on agricultural research
and innovation

4. Pre-IGAD Meeting
• Requested during RDA5
• With the objective to:
– Review of current goals
– Enlarge the group
– Foresee possible linkages with other IG and WG
– Define outputs to be delivered in 6 and/or 12
months

5. Highlighted topics
 Assess and find ways to increase participation
from universities, government and research
organizations in the Agricultural sector worldwide
within RDA
 Increase data access and availability (formats,
users)
 Interoperability (policies, tools, taxonomies,
standards)
 Possible inclusion of the Soil Research Data
Community in IGAD

6. Structure
• Intensive discussions and interactions
• 1 day. 19 presentations to show case the
highlighted topics + discuss semantics for
interoperability in agricultural research
• ½ day. 4 discussion groups
• Panel discussion during the RDAP6 Meeting

7. Participants
• 50 participants, from 5 continents
• Stakeholders producing, managing,
aggregating, sharing and consuming data for
agricultural research and innovation
– private sector, government, research
organizations, academia…

8. This session
• Discussion about conclusions of pre-meeting
• The end objective of these deliberations is to
be able to:
– identify the most important topics to work on
– forge collaborations among the members
– leverage and use the RDA platform to function,
report and plan outreach of the results.

9. Panel Session
• Moderator: Johannes Keizer (FAO of the UN)
• Discussion Groups Chairs:
– Group 1 .- Hugo Besemer (Wageningen University,
The Netherlands)
– Group 2.- Cyril Pommier (INRA, France) and Pierre
Larmande (Institute of Research for Development,
France)
– Group 3.- John Fereira (Cornell University, USA)
– Group 5.- Pandi Zdruli (Mediterranean Agronomic
Institute of Bari, Italy) and Devika Madalli (ISI, India)
• Wrap up

10. Proposals. Interoperability
• 3 possible topics:
– Data, metadata quality
– Disambiguation
– standardization of variables and units of measure
• More reporting to RDA from initiatives dealing
with these topics outside IGAD
• No possible further commitment due to lack
of institutional funding dedicated to RDA

11. Proposals. Awareness/Participation
• Major involvement of learnt societies in the
definition of good practices in data management
• Education, training, capacity development
– To explore linkages with the RDA Education and
Training…. IG
– IGAD as catalyst of training activities in research data
management in agriculture
• Possible collaboration with GODAN, e.g. funding
meetings

12. Proposals. Accessibility
• Carry on work on Wheat
• To expand it to other cereals. E.g. rice, maize,
millet…
• Guidelines dissemination (workshops, etc)
• Recommended data sharing repositories &
Permanent UID providers
• MCPD to include UID/COI for germplasm
• WG on phenotyping (?)

13. Proposals. Soil Research Data (1)
• WG Soil Data
• Contact Global Soil Community, expand and
invite to join the WG
• Topics of discussion like data quality,
interoperability
• State of the art of data availability of Soil Data
• Links with existing soil communication entities
• Constraints about funding!

14. Joint Session (1)
• Summary of the WDI WG
– Extension 6 months
– Review of the Guidelines (by researchers)
– Promotional activities
– Inclusion of new data types (now only 6 present)

15. Joint Session (2)
• Outputs:
– CookBook/Guidelines (website), AgroPortal (portal to
access ontologies on WD), Prototype for access WD
• New Projects (RDA Europe Call for Proposals):
– Training activities. Objective: Adoption of the
guidelines. Target users: researchers
– Integration into existing infrastructures
– Guidelines focused on domain specialities
– Etc….

16. Joint Session (3)
• DOI service for Wheat Data
• Domain ontology + RDFzier
• Use cases implemented within the AgroLD
tool
• Training activities

17. Joint Session (4)
• Ontologies & Vocabularies