AgBioData consortium recommendations for sustainable genomics and genetics databases for agriculture

Abstract The future of agricultural research depends on data. The sheer volume of agricultural biological data being produced today makes excellent data management essential. Governmental agencies, publishers and science funders require data management plans for publicly funded research. Furthermore, the value of data increases exponentially when they are properly stored, described, integrated and shared, so that they can be easily utilized in future analyses. AgBioData (https://www.agbiodata.org) is a consortium of people working at agricultural biological databases, data archives and knowledgbases who strive to identify common issues in database development, curation and management, with the goal of creating database products that are more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. We strive to promote authentic, detailed, accurate and explicit communication between all parties involved in scientific data. As a step toward this goal, we present the current state of biocuration, ontologies, metadata and persistence, database platforms, programmatic (machine) access to data, communication and sustainability with regard to data curation. Each section describes challenges and opportunities for these topics, along with recommendations and best practices.

Stephen P. Ficklin | Nic Herndon | Leonore Reiser | Tanya Z. Berardini | Chris Mungall | Clement Jonquet | Elizabeth Arnaud | Daureen Nesdill | Jill L. Wegrzyn | Christine G. Elsik | Lisa C. Harper | Taner Z. Sen | Bradford Condon | Monica Poelchau | Dorrie Main | Sook Jung | Marie-Angélique Laporte | Pankaj Jaiswal | Naama Menda | Ramona L. Walls | Carson M. Andorf | Laurel Cooper | Rex T. Nelson | Doreen Ware | Pierre Larmande | Ethalinda K. S. Cannon | James M. Reecy | Jing Yu | Jacqueline D. Campbell | Clayton L. Birkett | Steve Cannon | James Carson | Nathan A. Dunn | Andrew Farmer | David Grant | Emily S. Grau | Zhi-Liang Hu | Jodi Humann | Gerard R. Lazo | Fiona McCarthy | Monica C. Munoz-Torres | Sushma Naithani | Rex T. Nelson | Carissa A. Park | Lacey-Anne Sanderson | Margaret Staton | Sabarinath Subramaniam | Marcela K. Tello-Ruiz | Victor Unda | Deepak R. Unni | Liya Wang | Jason Williams | Margaret Woodhouse | Monica F. Poelchau | C. Mungall | M. Tello-Ruiz | C. Elsik | F. McCarthy | D. Grant | S. Cannon | D. Ware | T. Berardini | P. Jaiswal | L. Reiser | C. Jonquet | L. Cooper | M. Laporte | N. Dunn | E. Arnaud | S. Naithani | R. Walls | Naama Menda | Zhi-Liang Hu | J. Reecy | Liya Wang | T. Sen | S. Ficklin | P. Larmande | D. Main | Nic Herndon | A. Farmer | Bradford Condon | M. Munoz-Torres | L. Harper | J. Wegrzyn | M. Woodhouse | D. Unni | G. Lazo | Jason J. Williams | S. Subramaniam | M. Staton | J. Humann | Victor Unda | Jing Yu | Emily S. Grau | C. Birkett | L. Sanderson | S. Jung | C. Park | J. Carson | Daureen Nesdill | Sook Jung

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