Abstract
Background: Opportunities to use data and information to address challenges in international agricultural research and development are expanding rapidly. The use of agricultural trial and evaluation data has enormous potential to improve crops and management practices. However, for a number of reasons, this potential has yet to be realized. This paper reports on the experience of the AgTrials initiative, an effort to build an online database of agricultural trials applying principles of interoperability and open access. Methods: Our analysis evaluates what worked and what did not work in the development of the AgTrials information resource. We analyzed data on our users and their interaction with the platform. We also surveyed our users to gauge their perceptions of the utility of the online database. Results: The study revealed barriers to participation and impediments to interaction, opportunities for improving agricultural knowledge management and a large potential for the use of trial and evaluation data. Conclusions: Technical and logistical mechanisms for developing interoperable online databases are well advanced. More effort will be needed to advance organizational and institutional work for these types of databases to realize their potential.
Highlights
Agricultural research produces thousands of technology evaluations, most of which are crop variety trials
Most of the visitors were from Colombia, reflecting the program’s outreach from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which hosts the initiative and is based in Cali, Colombia
Our experience to date in developing an agricultural trial database and the responses to our user survey suggest a number of key topics that need to be considered in the future development of this or similar initiatives. These topics concern the quality and quantity of data, improvements needed in the database and website, possible combinations of this information resource with other information initiatives, open data and data infrastructure issues and institutional arrangements to make this kind of effort succeed
Summary
Agricultural research produces thousands of technology evaluations, most of which are crop variety trials. Trial data collected across a large geographic extent and over decades can be useful to monitor climate change or the spread of pests and diseases (Gourdji et al, 2012; Lampe et al, 2014; Lobell et al, 2011), to understand the drivers of technology adoption, to set research and development priorities and to conduct both ex-ante and ex-post impact analysis (Badu-Apraku et al, 2011; Hyman et al, 2016; Renkow & Byerlee, 2010; Setimela et al, 2005). The use of agricultural trial and evaluation data has enormous potential to improve crops and management practices. Results: The study revealed barriers to participation and impediments to interaction, opportunities for improving agricultural knowledge management and a large potential for the use of trial and evaluation data. More effort will be needed to advance organizational and institutional work for these types of databases to realize their potential
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