Facilitating Efficient Knowledge Management and Discovery in the Agronomic Sciences

Agronomy is an overarching field that consisting of various areas of research such genetics, plant molecular biology, ecology and earth science. To effectively develop applications improve crop production through sustainable methods it is important to over lay research findings from these fields as they are highly inter connected. We are currently witnessing rapid advancements in information technologies that continue to drive a flood of data and analysis techniques within the domains mentioned above. In particular, number initiatives have been taken for systematically storing and sharing information pertaining to agronomy over the web such as the Gramene [1], TAIR[2], OryzaBase[3] and the South Green bioinformatics platform[4], to name a few. These initiatives provide clear indications of the amount of data being generated in these fields. However, the data currently available are highly distributed and patchy in nature. Using these resources more effectively and taking advantage of associated cross-disciplinary research opportunities poses a major challenge to both domain scientists and information technologists.

A solution for the data integration challenges is offered by the Semantic Web technologies (SW) [5]. SW was proposed, to remedy the fragmentation of all the potentially very useful information on the web. The ‘Biological data and knowledge integration’ group at Institut de Biologie Computationnelle (IBC) [6], Montpellier, have been active in exploiting the advantages offered by SW. Currently, we are currently developing a RDF knowledge base, Agronomic Linked Data (AgroLD). The knowledge base is designed to integrate data from various publically available plant centric data sources. The aim of AgroLD project is to collaborate with domain experts in bridging the gap between technology and its potential users to enhance biological research. Here we present an overview of the project.

1. Monaco MK, Stein J, Naithani S, et al. (2014). Gramene 2013: comparative plant genomics resources. Nucleic Acids Res. 42 (D1): D1193-D1199.
2. Lamesch P, Tanya ZB, Donghui L, et al. The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR): improved gene annotation and new tools. Nucleic Acids Research 2011.
3. Kurata, N and Yamazaki Y (2006). Oryzabase. An integrated biological and genome information database for rice. Plant physiology, 140(1), 12-17.
4. South Green platform: http://southgreen.fr/.
5. Berners-Lee T and Hendler J (2001). 'Publishing on the semantic web'. Nature, 410, 1023-4.
6. IBC: www.ibc-montpellier.fr/wp/wp5.