Improving agricultural knowledge management: The AgTrials experience

Abstract

Opportunities to use data and information to address challenges Background: in international agricultural research and development are expanding rapidly. The use of agricultural trial and evaluation data has enormous potential to improve crops and management practices. However, for a number of reasons, this potential has yet to be realized. This paper reports on the experience of the initiative, an effort to build an online database of agricultural trials AgTrials applying principles of interoperability and open access. Our analysis Methods:evaluates what worked and what did not work in the development of the information resource. We analyzed data on our users and their AgTrials interaction with the platform. We also surveyed our users to gauge their perceptions of the utility of the online database.The study revealed Results: barriers to participation and impediments to interaction, opportunities for improving agricultural knowledge management and a large potential for the use of trial and evaluation data.Technical and logistical mechanisms Conclusions: for developing interoperable online databases are well advanced. More effort will be needed to advance organizational and institutional work for these types of databases to realize their potential.

Data synthesis for crop variety evaluation. A review

“…In cases when data are available, data integration sometimes encounters problems due to lack of standardization in terms of syntax, semantics and structure. Crop variety trial datasets are often very heterogeneous in terms of quantity, quality, types and formats (Hyman et al 2017;Leonelli et al 2017). Individual trial designs and observational methods vary according to the specific purpose of trials (Section 2).…”

“…Global open data and sharing initiatives aim to facilitate data accessibility, allowing the generation of new knowledge (Wilkinson et al 2016). With valuable contributions from diverse partner organizations, CGIAR centres have been developing information systems and platforms, aiming to integrate heterogenous data sources to support crop improvement research (McLaren et al 2005;Hyman et al 2017). Examples of this type of systems are the International Crop Information System (ICIS) and its derivatives, the International Rice Information System (IRIS) and the International Maize Information System (McLaren et al 2005;Shrestha et al 2010).…”

“…Despite these efforts, recent literature indicates that there are still serious challenges in implementing data standardization and sharing. About 85% of the more than 35,000 records in the AgTrials database contain only meta-data; hence, those interested in the underlying data should contact the original data provider (Hyman et al 2017). Problems persist on both the supply and demand side.…”

“…In addition, the efforts required for processing datasets with the accompanying meta-data to facilitate open access and use by others are often not acknowledged (Diekmann 2012;White and van Evert 2008). From 112 surveyed users of the AgTrials platform, 34% considered that their data are incorrectly organized to be shared publicly (Hyman et al 2017). In the cases where data are shared, it is mostly not through global repositories but rather as supplementary data on the journal website where associated articles were published (Williams 2012).…”

Improving agricultural knowledge management: The AgTrials experience

“…The project team administered a survey in August 2016 to evaluate the perspective of the AgTrials user base (survey results available from https://en.surveymonkey.net/results/SM-YLGDFPQG/) and survey data accompanies this article ( Dataset 1; Hyman et al , 2017). As an incentive to participate in the survey, users were offered the possibility to enter a draw for a smartphone, an incentive reflected in the 44% response rate of users who received an invitation.…”