The Integrape meeting is focused on developing FAIR (Findable, Accesible, Interoperable and Reusable) standards to harmonize databases on Vitis genomics, genetics, and breeding.
Report written by Qi Sun and Anne Fennell
Integrape (http://www.integrape.eu) is a cooperation network sponsored by European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST, CA17111). The mission of INTEGRAPE is to bring together all stakeholders in the grapevine research community (academic, industry, policymakers and consumers) in an open, international, and representative network to develop minimal data standards and good practices in order to integrate data repositories and improve interoperability between datasets.
The first annual meeting of Integrape was held on March 25th-28th at the Conference Center of Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania, Crete, Greece. Grape researchers from COST member countries of the Europe Union attended the meeting. United States is one of the COST International Partner Countries. Three VitisGen2 scientists, Dr. Anne Fennell of South Dakota State University, Dr. Qi Sun of Cornell University and Dr. Dario Cantu of UC Davis attended the meeting, and presented ongoing projects under VitisGen2.
FAIR (the principle that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) was the theme integrating the meeting. Grapevine research results in diverse dispersed datasets including repository collections, imaging, environmental biology, genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. Integrape’s meeting focus was to set up workable plans in the next four years to deliver FAIR data.
Action items being discussed at the meeting including data interoperability and data standards conventions, data analysis and best practices, interoperability of infrastructure and web services and dissemination of recommendations and guidelines. Integration of existing databases, e.g. Vitis International Variety Catalogue (VIVC) and the European Vitis Database; adoption of data and meta models like BrAPI and MIAPPE; establishing an international grape data registry to facilitate data findability; adoption of Vitis Ontology by the grape research community.
In recent year, VitisGen2 projects have been producing large amount of data associated with breeding activities in the US, with data types covering genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics and phenomics. With the rapidly increasing mass of data, defining best practice in data management and enabling data interoperability are becoming more urgent issues for research and breeding programs in both US and European.
Collaborations between VitisGen2 and Integrape were discussed during the meeting. Initial action items including unifying the VitisGen2 Trait Ontology with the Vitis Ontology; establishment of globally unique germplasm identifiers; common models for data and meta data; participation in annual meetings by representatives of the two projects.