IGAD Community of Practice

The Improving Global Agricultural Data (IGAD) Community of Practice, formerly called The Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD), came to life in Gothenburg (Göteborg, Sweden) in 2013 at the beginning of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and has since grown to include over 260 registered members, from across continents. IGAD is a domain-oriented interest group working on all issues related to food and agricultural data. It represents stakeholders in managing data for food and agricultural research and innovation, including producing, aggregating and consuming data.

Beyond this, IGAD promotes good practices and RDA Recommendations in the research domain, including data sharing policies, data management plans, and data interoperability. As a forum for sharing experiences and providing visibility to research and work in food and agricultural data, IGAD has become a space for networking and blending ideas related to data management and interoperability. It also provides fertile ground to reach out and promote projects among other international organizations and institutions working in food and agricultural research and innovation. On a logistical level, one of IGAD’s chief roles is to serve as a platform that leads to the creation of domain-specific Working Groups.

For more information on why IGAD should transition to become the “Improving Global Agricultural Data” Community of Practice, described further in the “Objectives” section. Benefits and alignment with RDA goals are described below under the Value Proposition section. 2. User scenario(s) or use case(s) the CoP wishes to address.
 

Objectives

• To promote good practices in the research domain: data sharing policies, data management plan, data interoperability
• To provide a platform for networking and cross-fertilization of research ideas in data management and interoperability
• To solicit and promote interactions and projects among the major international institutions and groups worldwide which work on agricultural research and innovation
• To achieve data interoperability

Former Working Groups

• Wheat Data Interoperability
• Rice Data Interoperability
• AgriSemantics
• Capacity Development for Agricultural Data

Birds of Feather Groups

• Metrics and Indicators in Agricultural Sciences

Events at RDA Plenaries

The RDA holds its plenary meetings every six months at different locations around the world. Built around the RDA Working and Interest Group meetings the sessions are designed to consolidate the RDA’s work and that of its interest groups in building social and technological bridges towards open data sharing. IGAD’s role since its inception at the RDA Gothenburg has expanded with every successive Plenary. The outcomes of the Wheat Data Interoperability Group have proved to be a success and the challenge is now on to replicate those successes with other groups, e.g. the Rice Group.

IGAD has used the Plenary meetings as a place to reach out and forge new alliances with other groups, as well as creating new offshoot groups aimed at specific solutions. During Plenary sessions IGAD has hosted a wide array of speakers and discussions and it continues to work alongside major international initiatives among others.

• RDA P19. June 2022 in Seoul (Republic of Korea) – hybrid Agenda Recording 
  2nd IGAD Annual Meeting: March-April 2022 Agenda Recordings
• RDA P18. November 2021 – virtual Agenda Recording
• RDA P17. April 2021 – virtual Agenda Recording
• RDA P16. November 2020 – virtual Agenda
  1st IGAD Annual Meeting: May 2020 Agenda
• RDA P15. April 2020 – virtual Agenda Recording
• RDA P14. October 2019 in Helsinki (Finland) Agenda Recordings

• RDA P13.  April 2019 in Philadelphia (USA) Invitation and agenda, Insights

• RDA P12.  November 2018 in Gaborone (Botswana) Invitation and agenda, Insights

• RDA P11.  March 2018 in Berlin (Germany) Invitation and agenda, Insights

• RDA P10. September 2017 in Montreal (Canada) Invitation and agenda, Insights

• RDA P9. April 2017 in Barcelona (Spain) Invitation and agenda, highlights

• RDA P8. September 2017 in Denver (USA) Highlights

• RDA P7. March 2016 in Tokyo (Japan) Agenda, results, highlights

• RDA P6. September 2015 in Paris (France) Insights, Results

• RDA P5. March 2015 in San Diego (USA)  Agenda

• RDA P4. September 2014 in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) Agenda

• RDA P3. March 2014 in Dublin (Ireland)

• RDA P2. September 2013 in Washington DC (USA)

RDA Webinar Series on Agriculture

At the last IGAD/RDA Plenary Meeting 14 at the University of Helsinki (Finland), the IGAD community agreed to start a webinar series to enable high quality presentations and discussions to happen even if we cannot all be together in person at RDA. The Agricultural Data Interest Group (IGAD) exists to facilitate coordination and progress among a community of international data experts. These webinars will allow us keep up with cutting edge developments in agricultural data, and will encourage the free flow of ideas.

• Title: Global Long-term Experiments in Agriculture Network (GLTEN) Metadata Portal

Date: 20 November, 2019

Webinar recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llxMwjhRKpk&feature=emb_logo 

More information: http://aims.fao.org/capacity-development/webinars/rda-webinar-series-agriculture-%E2%80%98global-long-term-experiments

• Title: Mobilizing Capacity Development for Bridging the Digital Divide in Agriculture

Date: 12 December, 2019

Webinar recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEfFRtOkuOo&feature=emb_logo

More information: http://aims.fao.org/capacity-development/webinars/rda-webinar-series-agriculture-mobilizing-capacity-development

• Title: Collaborative Open Plant Omics (COPO): Extending the frontiers of “FAIR” Data in Agriculture

Date: 12 February, 2020

Webinar recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yqyFo_Ms0&feature=emb_logo

More information: http://aims.fao.org/capacity-development/webinars/copo-extending-frontiers-data 

• Title: The update of agricultural ontologies in Japan – Agricultural Activity Ontology and Crop Vocabulary

Date: 24 March, 2020

Webinar recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=244&v=C8Z3YWqp2Vs&feature=emb_logo 

More information: http://aims.fao.org/capacity-development/webinars/rdaigad-webinar-series-update-agricultural-ontologies-japan

IGAD20COP20proposal_1-2.pdf

Godan20signed20letterhead_0-2.pdf

IGAD20CoP20Support20Letter20-20Syngenta-signed_1-2.pdf

Rothamsted20IGAD20CoP20Support20Letter_1-2.pdf