Abstract The United States Agricultural Research Service (ARS) recently declared a grand challenge: Transform agriculture to deliver a 20% increase in quality*1 food availability with 20% lower environmental impact by 2025. Addressing this challenge requires a sea change in how it conducts agricultural research. Not only will teams need ... https://doi.org/10.3897/tdwgproceedings.1.20434
Agricultural biodiversity has long been ignored by the traditional biodiversity community and the aggregators of their data. The February 2016 GBIF "Final Report of the Task Group on GBIF Data Fitness for Use in Agrobiodiversity," provided recommendations primarily regarding crops and their wild relatives, but did not address wider issues of crop pests (plant diseases and their vectors, arthropods) and management systems that affect the greater biodiversity of those crops. The TDWG16 symposium, "Agricultural Biodiversity Standards & Semantics," highlighted the current status of agrobiodiversity data management and discussed major challenges in this field. This year’s symposium will provide a progress report on addressing challenges such as crop management and experimental protocol standards and infraspecific taxonomic coverage. It will dive deeper into trends in semantics and data mining for agriculture, and in application of standards to biodiversity assessments. We aim to provide specific examples where shared data management standards and practices across both basic and applied biodiversity research communities can lead to improved outcomes for both science and society.
Abstract Voucher specimens are the ultimate raw data of biodiversity studies because they document the interpretation of the names used in papers and reports resulting from such studies. The value of voucher specimens is increased by making their records web-accessible but they can be further enhanced by linking them to other online reso ... https://doi.org/10.3897/tdwgproceedings.1.19932
Abstract Documenting and understanding agrobiodiversity is important for human well-being, agricultural sustainability and food security. This is more significant and urgent in the current context of massive landscape transformation, industrialization of agriculture and climate change. Recognizing the limited data on agricultural biodive ... https://doi.org/10.3897/tdwgproceedings.1.19820
Abstract While agriculture, a human-defined and delimited version of the natural world, is not generally touted for its biodiversity, the success or failure of an agroecosystem may hinge on how its biodiversity is managed. Researchers who study this world into which the greater biodiversity of the surrounding area ebbs and flows, attempt ... https://doi.org/10.3897/tdwgproceedings.1.20050
Abstract Agricultural biodiversity has long been ignored by the traditional biodiversity community and the aggregators of their data. The Arnaud et al. (2016) GBIF "Final Report of the Task Group on GBIF Data Fitness for Use in Agrobiodiversity," provided recommendations primarily regarding crops and their wild relatives, but did not add ... https://doi.org/10.3897/tdwgproceedings.1.20100
