Connecting Data, Strengthening Research: FAIRagro as a Central Contact Point for Research Data Management in the Agricultural Sciences

Abstract

This poster was presented on the TRA Workshop "Great Data, Great Science" at the University of Bonn on 06 October 2026. --- Agricultural research increasingly depends on the integration, standardization, and sustainable reuse of heterogeneous research data. Data are generated across disciplines such as agroecology, breeding, plant production, soil science, and vegetable production, and at spatial scales ranging from genes and plants to felds, landscapes, and the global level. Te diversity of data types - including geospatial, sensitive, legacy, and Farming 4.0 data - creates challenges concerning data quality, interoperability, legal compliance, reproducibility, and long-term accessibility. In our poster we will present the NFDI (German National Research Data Infrastructure) consortium FAIRagro. FAIRagro addresses these challenges through a consortium of 33 partners providing services for the FAIR - findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable - management of research data in agrosystem science research. Its objectives are to establish a central access point for the agricultural research community, promote a cultural shif towards collaborative research data management, and provide practical guidance, standards, and infrastructures. FAIRagro’s activities cover community involvement, training and networking; standards, metadata, data quality, FAIRness, and legal aspects; central services and infrastructures; and management and coordination. Key services include the FAIRagro Helpdesk, which ofers expertise in e.g. geodata, data publication, coordination, law and ethics, Farming 4.0, and plant breeding, and the FAIRagro Search Hub, a web portal supporting the discovery of repositories and datasets. Te searchable datasets are retrieved from diferent domain-specifc repositories and include also the agricultural datasets from the bonndata repository. Training activities and an online training calendar complement these services by strengthening researchers’competencies in FAIR data management.