This March is the official project launch for the FAIRagro consortium (2023-2028). FAIRagro consists of about 30 agricultural research institutions in Germany and is coordinated by ZALF. As part of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), the consortium will improve the framework for cross-institutional and cross-scale research. Important tasks and goals include support and advice on research data management, a unified search portal for research data in the field of agrosystem research, and the networking of existing research data repositories with agricultural science backgrounds.
We are pleased to finally move from the theoretical planning to the productive project phase. Currently, we are advertising vacancies in the various institutions to fill the approximately 40 project positions soon. On April 26, the consortium will meet in a first FAIRagro Plenary to present the planned work within the project.
More information: press release of ZALF "Funding for simplified access to agrosystems research data"
A general FAIRagro article was published in Informatik Spektrum. This article presents the FAIRagro consortium in general and its objectives.
Specka, X., Martini, D., Weiland, C. et al. FAIRagro: Ein Konsortium in der Nationalen Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI) für Forschungsdaten in der Agrosystemforschung. Informatik Spektrum (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00287-022-01520-w
We have published our FAIRagro proposal, as submitted to DFG in 2021, on Zenodo. It can be accessed under DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7528172.
As confirmed by the Joint Science Conference (GWK) in a press conference on November 4, 2022, FAIRagro will be included as a consortium in the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and will be funded by the federal and state governments from March 2023. A funding period of five years is envisaged. In November 2021, the FAIRagro project proposal was submitted to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for funding from 2023-2027 and was recommended for funding by a DFG expert panel in spring 2022. Now, at a press conference of the GWK, it was confirmed that FAIRagro will be included in the NFDI as one of eight additional consortia in the third and final funding round. So far, 19 consortia are already part of the NFDI. The federal and state governments will provide a total of up to 90 million euros per year until 2028 for the establishment and funding of the 27 NFDI consortia at a ratio of 90 percent to 10 percent. It was a challenging path, but together we have mastered it. We would like to sincerely thank all our partners for their support and look forward to working together and to a successful launch of FAIRagro!
The first job offers in FAIRagro have now been published. If you want to join FAIRagro, just apply.
On 29 and 30 June FAIRagro was an invited guest at the "1st Summer Conference of the GFPi Plant Innovation Department". In addition to exciting insights into the world of breeding, it was impressively shown which data are collected, stored and evaluated with which methods. For example, powerful field robots equipped with sensors and supported by AI have an impressive hit rate when combating weeds. We presented FAIRagro's "Data Steward Service Centre" as an important service module. In particular, the services in the field of research data management met with great interest. We were also able to take advantage of the very good opportunities for interaction with various projects such as DataPlant (NFDI), AgriGAIA (GAIA-X), Breedfides (GFPI), BreedVision (University of Hohenheim, Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences) and are planning the first further bilateral meetings with DataPlant for August.
At International Data Week 2022 (IDW 2022), we presented FAIRagro on a virtual poster. Among others, this attracted the attention of Stefanie Kethers, Program Coordinator of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) "Translational Research Data Challenges" and former member of the RDA Secretariat. Stefanie was particularly interested in the topic of data privacy and the handling of sensitive data in our consortium. For this reason, a joint exchange between FAIRagro and ARDC was initiated during IDW 2022. Representatives from ZALF (Xenia Specka and Carsten Hoffmann) participated in a first virtual meeting. Stefanie reported that ARDC is currently dealing with the challenges of data management on the topic of "food security". Various projects of different disciplines will be financially supported so solve data challenges on this specific topic. There are many overlaps between ARDC and FAIRagro, the overall NFDI and the work in the NFDI sections. Further meetings for a more in-depth exchange are therefore planned during this year.
The DFG's expert panel "National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI)" recommends FAIRagro for funding from 2023 onwards. In a combination of written procedure and hybrid meeting, it deliberated on the 15 consortia proposals submitted in 2021 in the third round of calls for proposals. As a result, the NFDI expert panel recommends FAIRagro to the Joint Science Conference (GWK) for funding from 1 January 2023. This makes FAIRagro one of seven consortia to receive this recommendation. When assessing eligibility for funding, the key criteria were the technical quality of a consortium, its acceptance in the community and the quality of the measures to ensure the necessary feedback with the community. The final decision of the GWK in November remains to be seen. We are very pleased about this recommendation and thank all those involved and the FAIRagro community for their great commitment up to this point. We are confident that we will be able to overcome the last hurdle and start next year.
On 20 June 2022, we organised the 2nd FAIRagro Community Workshop with almost 100 participants on the topic of "Services and Tools - Useful Services and Tools for FAIR Data Management in Agrosystems Research". The aim of this workshop was to inform our community about planned tools, frameworks and services, to interest, motivate and network for FAIR data management using FAIRagro services. The video recordings of the presentations and slides will be posted on our website soon - after the DFG expert panel has assessed the eligibility of our proposal. With this workshop FAIRagro started a 3-part series. Two more workshops will follow on 14 October 2022 (topic: Use cases - which concrete challenges from the agrosystems community do we address and how can I use the results?) and in December (topic: "Information and participation opportunities - what form of consultation is there and how can I get involved?). We would like to thank all participants for their active interest and look forward to the following workshops.
The Improving Global Agricultural Data (IGAD - https://www.rd-alliance.org/groups/igad-community-practice ) Community of Practice, is a growing community within the agricultural data domain with at least 260 registered members. Nearly 400 participants took part in the Second Annual Virtual Meeting (Program and Abstracts - http://aims.fao.org/RDA_IGAD_AnnualMeeting2022 ), which took place from March 22 and April 8, 2022.
FAIRagro was particularly engaged this year and was able to represent the interests of FAIR data management for agricultural systems research with three presentations:
- Carsten Hoffmann (ZALF): "BonaRes Repository - FAIR Research Data Management for agriculture", recording available here: https://youtu.be/cqT7iLXi0rk , starting at 27:45.
- Nikolai Svoboda (ZALF): "An Overview Map of Long Term Experiments (LTE)", recording available here: https://youtu.be/7J_2o_Mn9Pw , starting at 5:12
- Daniel Martini (KTBL): "Data vs. knowledge: a closer look at FAIR principle I1 and its implications on practical implementation", recording available here: https://youtu.be/7J_2o_Mn9Pw , starting at 1:10:40
We thank the community and all participants for their ongoing interest and great discussions.
A joint InfraTalk with NFDI4BioDiversity, DataPlant and NFDI4Microbiota entitled "Current developments in the global Genome Commons and challenges for service provision in NFDI" was given on 16.05.2022, on research results on potential value chain of Digital Sequence Information (DSI) and ways to quantify DSI uses in science. The talk dived into current chalenges and options for use of DSI, and outreach to the WiLDSI data portal to quantify the DSI use in scintific literature as collaborive effort in the WiLDSI project together with the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ), the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK). The recording of the InfraTalk is available at YouTube.
Spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Frank Ewert
Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)
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