Exploration Hour is a time for you to choose from a variety of hands-on activities, including play with the AgroFIMS Prototype [only available Wednesday and Friday].
AgroFIMS (Agronomy Field Information Management System) consists of a web application that enables the creation of a field data collection template with standardized variables that are concepts in the Agronomy Ontology, relevant crop ontologies, and other related ontologies. This approach enables easy data comparison, aggregation, mining and interpretation, and data reuse across projects, and in analyses, models and decision-support tools. Ontologies proffer further advantages for data mining and exploration, including the possibility for making inferences, and connecting with Linked Data in other related domains (e.g. nutrition and health). The AgroFIMS variables are sorted into a series of modules representing the typical cycle of operations in agronomic trial management, such as: land preparation, irrigation, weeding, soil fertility, weather and soil parameters, biotic and abiotic stress observation and control, and more. The fieldbook application will allow the creation of data collection sheets using the same base set of semantics, including variables, terminology, units, protocols, etc., enabling standardization in data collection and description and linkages with breeding and other related data. In addition, AgroFIMS promotes digital collection of data to reduce error and ease data collection via an in-development mobile app that will allow data collection in the field; it is also possible to adapt AgroFIMS to other digital data collection platforms such as ODK.
