A discussion about CABI's Plantwise

Plantwise is a global programme, launched back in 2011, working to increase food security and improve rural livelihoods by reducing crop losses. Plantwise is led by CABI, an organization with over 100 years of experience in agricultural research. The Plantwise team is working closely with national agricultural advisory services and establishes and supports sustainable networks of "plant clinics", run by trained plant doctors, where farmers can find practical plant health advice. The whole approach is innovative and seems to have a significant impact so far.
At the core of Plantwise there is the The Plantwise Knowledge Bank: a huge database containing a wealth of knowledge related to plant pests (mostly in the form of factsheets), which provides country- or region-specific plant health information. What is interesting is that this knowledge is constantly updated; not only from the CABI side, which adds new resources related to plant pest infections, but also from the plant doctors who actually create new factsheets on a regular basis based on the incidences that they meet and address as part of their work

About one week ago I had the pleasure to get engaged in a really interesting discussion with Martin Parr, a man with many hats: he is the Operations Director for the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition Secretariat (GODAN), he also works in CABI’s Knowledge Services for International Development and last but not least, he is the Head of Open Data at CABI. Martin is a long time acquaintance (we first met during the RDA 3rd Plenary Meeting in Dublin, Ireland in March 2014, and then again one month later, during the CIARD/GODAN Joint Consultation in April 2014). Martin was kind enough to bring me in contact with Dr. Shaun Hobbs, Director of the Plantwise Knowledge Bank. The reason for this discussion was for me to get some information about the data sources of the Plantwise Knowledge Bank, the transformation of this data into Factsheets and then the sharing of the data with the plant doctors and farmers, that I could use for the research I was conducting in the context of the GODAN White Paper.

Plantwise + IPPC side event at CPM9 in Rome- April 2, 2014 from CABIslides

During the discussion I had the opportunity to get a lot of information on the sources and the use of data, the licenses, the agreements with governments for the use of governmental data and the combination of publicly available data with private ones, a fact that raised some issues for sharing the processed information. I was also guided through the process including the development of the Factsheets, their use by plant doctors in the plant clinics, the role of the tablets in the process (replacing paper and computers at the same time), the collection of data produced by the pant doctors and how they are used for keeping the Knowledge Bank updated and many other interesting things.

#PlantWise Knowledge Bank: The home of #plant health innovation https://t.co/B1qESeLhos via @CABI_News #farming pic.twitter.com/3ZXnK9L5V3

— AgroKnow (@AgroKnow) May 5, 2015

However, what impressed me most about this discussion was how passionate both of them were about their work and Plantwise in general and how knowledgeable they were, explaining every little detail to me, adding pieces every now and then, going into even more details and being excited about sharing their work with me. I felt really glad to be able to meet both Martin and Shaun and to be engaged in this interesting discussion.

If you want to learn more about Plantwise, you can check out the Plantwise website, Plantwise blog and social media (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) - you can also check out the Plantwise Android app as well as a recent report on the use of digital technologies in the processes.

Book on "Livestock Handling & Transport": A well-accepted gift!

Being a regular Twitter user (both for personal and for professional purposes; I manage the Agro-Know Twitter account apart from mine), I came across a tweet from @Cabi_News about a competition that was running:

To win our last signed copy of @DrTempleGrandin 's 'Livestock Handling and Transport', tell us the city and state she was born in!
— CABI_News (@CABI_News) July 23, 2014

I  happened to have heard of Dr. Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Sciences at the Colorado State University due to her work related to autism (but she seems to be of many talents, as many autistic persons I know), and so I had some (small) previous information about her and it was easy for me to get the correct answer; it seems that I was the first one to respond, so I was informed that I was the winner of a signed copy of Dr. Grandin's book titled "Livestock Handling and Transport". Being an agronomist myself, I still keep an interest for purely agricultural topics despite my professional involvement in other aspects of agriculture (e.g. agricultural digital repositories, agricultural bibliographic resources, etc.), so I found myself interested in the topic of the book, which by the way is published by CABI.

The winner of our final signed copy of @DrTempleGrandin 's title 'Livestock Handling & Transport' is @vprot ! Congratulations!
— CABI_News (@CABI_News) July 23, 2014

It seems that people at CABI did their best in order for me to receive the book as soon as possible and indeed I received it today, only a few days after we exchanged some messages about the delivery of the book! What a wonderful prize; a high quality publication on glossy paper, about the proper, fair and humane management of livestock of various types. There are chapter contributions from several authors, a fact that makes the book really interesting.

Wonderful gift from CABI and Dr. Temple Grandin

I am really looking forward to start reading it and I will do my best to find some time to review it as well (as long as I first find the time to read it though!). Until then, you can find additional information about the book at Amazon.