Summary of the meeting
On Thursday May 7th, a EPGRIS3 self funded workshop, hosted by Frank Begemann and Siegfried Harrer, was organised at the Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung (BLE) in Bonn, Germany.
The workshop was participated by 12 participants including most of the collaborators in EPGRIS3 activities 2-05 and 2-06, only Afig Mammadov and Iva Faberova were unable to attend. (see list of participants)
The meeting largely followed the agenda, with a morning with 9 presentations sketching the PGR documentation landscape and the treatment of C&E data in genebanks and European Central Crop Databases, and the afternoon for discussion on the proposal for inclusion of C&E data in EURISCO as written by Theo van Hintum. (see agenda)
All presentations, in the order as they were presented:
The European ex situ PGR Information Landscape - Theo van Hintum, Frank Begemann, Lorenzo Maggioni
C&E data in the genebank documentation system of NGB - Jonas Nordling, Dag Terje Endresen
Acquisition and Management of C&E Data within the Genebank Information System (GBIS) at IPK Gatersleben - Andreas Stephanik
C&E data in the documentation system of CGN - Roel Hoekstra, Theo van Hintum, Frank Menting
C&E data in the German national information system EVA / EVA2 - Siegfried Harrer
C&E data in the European Avena Database and the International Database for Beta - Christoph Germeier)
C&E data in the European Barley Database - Helmut Knüpffer
C&E data in ECCDBs - Lorenzo Maggioni
GIGA Project - Options for managing characterization and evaluation data - Michael Mackay
Inclusion of C&E data in EURISCO - analysis and options - Theo van Hintum
Implementing C&E data inclusion in EURISCO - preliminary concepts - Sónia Dias
The afternoon discussion was positive and constructive. A general consensus regarding the proposal already surfaced in the morning presentations, and was confirmed when the assumptions were unanimously adopted: "it is not feasible to enforce any standardization in terms of experimental design, the use of standards or even the scale of measurement", "all (potential) data donors should be able to export their data, as they have it, in a common format, provided that this is a flexible format" and "the value of C&E data is that high to a user that (s)he is willing to invest time in analyzing the data". Also the principle of creating a repository of unstandardised C&E data in the framework of EURISCO was adopted, with the addition that the repository should only be used for non-confidential data.
It was stressed that only C&E data on accessions already in EURISCO could be uploaded, however it was decided that any registered 'uploader' (the National Focal Point, or someone approved by the NFP) can upload data on any EURISCO accession, so not only on accessions in the National Inventory of the 'uploader'.
Some modifications to the structure of the C&E data to be uploaded were discussed and adopted; they have been worked in the amended proposal. The original proposal clearly had the 'mininal' structure being as simple as possible, with as few fields as possible; in the discussion it was tried to reach a balance between 'simplicity' for the uploader and 'functionality' for the searcher and user. This resulted in a number of additional fields such as the longitude and latitude of the experimental site.
Finally agreement was reached on the next steps to take: the preparation of the report and amended proposal (TvH), the distribution within appropriate parts of the ECPGR network (FB), the check for compliance of the new proposal with ICIS and GRIN-Global (MM), the presentation of this initiative in the GIGA process (FB), and the final amendment of the proposal, taking all feedback into account (TvH, FB, LM). From there on the proposal could be widely distributed and discussed within the ECPGR and EURISCO community, and the next technical steps can be made, including preparation of the documents and software. NordGen, CGN, IPK and BLE confirmed their willingness to supply the first datasets as soon as the uploading software on the EURISCO site would be available.
Finally, the need for proper funding of the activity was expressed. Especially since a considerable workload can be expected and since there is a need for dedicated coordination of the activities, it will be difficult to base this on EPGRIS3 model of input-in-kind solely. Given the relevance of this activity to the Giga/ALIS project the possibility for inclusion in (the second phase of) Giga should be explored, as should be other options.
The meeting was closed around 19:45, thanking the organisers and the participants; a major step towards the inclusion of C&E data in EURISCO had been made!
The group photo at the courtesy of Helmut, with the Rhein and Köningswinter in the back (from left to right: Dag-Terje, Christoph, Helmut, Jonas, Michael, Theo, Frank, Andreas, Lorenzo, Roel, Jan and Sónia). This and a few other large group photos can be downloaded (all, without Helmut, without Siegfried, and .., and .., and .., and Köningswinter).
Links
EPGRIS3 main page
list of EPGRIS3 activities
list of EPGRIS3 contacts
Proposal 'inclusion of C&E data in EURISCO'