Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
Abstract
The Agronomy Field Information Management System (AgroFIMS) has been developed on CGIAR’s HIDAP (Highly Interactive Data Analysis Platform) created by CGIAR’s International Potato Center, CIP. AgroFIMS draws fully on ontologies, particularly the Agronomy Ontology (AgrO)1. It consists of modules that represent the typical cycle of operations in agronomic trial management (seeding, weeding, fertilization, harvest, and more) and enables the creation of data collection sheets using the same ontology-based set of variables, terminology, units and protocols. AgroFIMS therefore enables a priori harmonization with metadata and data interoperability standards and adherence to the FAIR Data Principles essential for data reuse and increasingly, for compliance with funder mandates - without any extra work for researchers. AgroFIMS is therefore of value to anyone (scientist, researcher, agronomist, etc.) who wishes to easily design a standards-compliant agronomic research fieldbook following the FAIR Data Principles.
AgroFIMS also allows users to collect data electronically in the field, thereby reducing errors. Currently this is restricted to the KDSmart Android platform, but we expect to enable this capability with other platforms such as the Open Data Kit (ODK) and Field Book in v.2.0. Once data is collected using KDSmart, the data can be uploaded back to AgroFIMS for data validation, statistical analysis, and the generation of statistical analysis reports. V.2.0 will allow easy upload of the data from AgroFIMS to an institutional or compliant repository of the user’s choice
