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In this document we aim at composing a high level overview of the use of semantics in the production, exchange and use of agricultural data. In particular, we focus on the use of semantics for data management, and the resources, tools and services available for its production. We also look at the current research trends in the area. Semantics refers to the description of the meaning of data, made possible by “semantic resources” (aka “semantic structures”) aiming at making explicit the information that may help to find, understand, and reuse data(sets). Semantics may also make explicit the entities and relations the data embody. Granted that no data is ever produced or distributed without some attempts to describe its meaning (all databases have column names, all documents have a title and often some ways to indicate what topics they are about), the level of semantic richness, accuracy, shareability and reusability of the resources used vary greatly. The goal of our this document is to indicate the main tasks where semantics is used or could be used for the treatment of agricultural data and highlight current bottlenecks, limitations and impact on interoperability of the current situation. The intended readers of this document are managers, project coordinators, data scientists, and researchers interesting in getting the big picture of semantics in agriculture. In particular, it aims at being readable and useful to the various communities involved, touching on both the data management and the agricultural side. We use the phrase “semantic resources” to collectively refer to structures of varying nature, complexity and formats used for the purpose of expressing the “meaning” of data. However, we acknowledge the fact that not all semantic resources equally contribute to the achieving effective data interoperability, and wherever possible we highlight the current use of them and identify limitations. The concept of agricultural data is generic for data produced or used in agriculture, including data on agricultural production, or data relative to lab and field experiments, environmental conditions or climate, just to mention a few relevant areas of data productions). Being aware of the width of the sector, we make no claims on comprehensiveness. In terms of formats, we are interested in both textual/semi-structured documents and structured data, including georeferenced data. This landscaping exercise is based on (1) expertise of the group members (2) previous/ongoing initiatives and (3) a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature. It lays the basis for the two following activities of the RDA Agrisemantics Working Group - the collection of real-life use cases where semantics is useful or needed, and the compilation of a set of recommendations for future infrastructural component supporting data management and semantics. This document is organized in the following way. The Introduction (Sec.1) sets the context and introduces the terminology adopted in the course of the document. Sec. 2 (Semantics and Data Management) presents a high level account of possible different users of semantics in agriculture, with a discussion on state-of-the-art interoperability related work. Sec. 3 (Research Trends) analyzes the research trends in semantics for agriculture and nutrition in the past 10 years. Sec. 4 (Semantics Structures in the Agricultural Domain) describes the landscape of existing vocabularies for data specification in agriculture. Sec. 5 (The Semantic Expert Toolkit) describes the tools and services currently available for the creation of maintenance of semantic resources. As they are mostly generic tools, we look specifically at practices in the agriculture and food community. Finally, we draw our conclusions in Sec 6 (Conclusions and Next Steps).

Lors de la conception de nouveaux emballages pour des produits frais, les acteurs de la filière expriment leurs contraintes et leurs préférences en fonction des objectifs à atteindre. Elles portent sur les caractéristiques des produits frais et celles des emballages. La conservation sous atmosphère modifiée représente une solution efficace pour retarder la sénescence, réduire les pertes et par conséquent étendre la très courte durée de vie des produits respirant comme les fruits et les légumes frais. La conservation sous atmosphère modifiée requière un équilibre entre la respiration des produits et la perméabilité de l’emballage qui permet à l’atmosphère de l’espace de tête d’atteindre une composition de conservation optimale, qui dépend du produit. Pour cela, les perméabilités O2/CO2 des emballages doivent correspondre aux contraintes des fruits et légumes frais prédites par les outils de simulation virtuelle des atmosphères modifiées. Au-delà des perméabilités, le choix d’un emballage alimentaire dépend de nombreux autres critères comme le coût, la disponibilité, la contamination potentielle des constituants, les contraintes de gestion des déchets, … Pour aider les acteurs à prendre une décision rationnelle basée sur les besoins exprimés, un nouvel outil d’aide à la décision multicritères a été conçu. Dans cet article, nous présentons les spécifications fonctionnelles de l’outil, l’architecture et l’implémentation du logiciel. Il inclut : (i) un module de simulation de l’atmosphère modifié combinant des modèles de transfert et la respiration de l’aliment ; (ii) un module d’interrogation multicritères d’une base de données emballages qui gère l’imprécision, l’incertitude et l’incomplétude des données., To design new packaging for fresh food, stakeholders of the food chain express their needs and requirements, according to some goals and objectives. These requirements can be gathered into two groups: (i) fresh food related characteristics and (ii) packaging intrinsic characteristics. Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) is an efficient way to delay senescence and spoilage and thus to extend the very short shelf life of respiring products such as fresh fruits and vegetables. MAP requires an equilibrium between the respiration of the products and the permeability of the packaging that allows the internal atmosphere to reach an optimal composition, which depends on the product. Consequently, packaging O2/CO2 permeabilities must fit the requirements of fresh fruits and vegetable as predicted by virtual MAP simulating tools. Beyond gas permeabilities, the choice of a packaging material for fresh produce includes numerous other factors such as the cost, availability, potential contaminants of raw materials, process ability, waste management constraints, etc. To help stakeholders taking a rational decision based on the expressed needs, a new multi-criteria Decision Support System (DSS) for selecting biodegradable packaging for fresh produce has been built. In this paper we present the functional specification, the software architecture and the implementation of the developed tool. [br/] This tool includes (i) a MAP simulation module combining mass transfer models and respiration of the food, (ii) a multi-criteria flexible querying module which handles imprecise, uncertain and missing data stored in the database.

International audience; There is a growing trend for governmental efforts to promote health benefits of fresh foods, despite their short shelf life. Beyond respect of the chill chain, modified atmosphere is an efficient way to delay senescence and spoilage without using controversial preservatives compounds. Modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) for fresh produce relies on modification of the atmosphere inside the package in order to extend food shelf life and is achieved by the interplay of two processes: (1) the transfer of gases through the packaging and (2) the respiration of the product. MAP can be achieved by matching the film permeation rate with the respiration rate of respiring products. There is a wealth of published information on MAP but a lack of systematic treatment of the data that can provide information to designers and users on which film to use for particular purposes and targets. This approach is especially important for developing biodegradable packaging because of the limited barrier properties of most of them that could be either turned out into an asset to extend shelf life of respiring foods. Mathematical models have been developed (such as www.tailorpack.com) to design passive MAP. Such numerical tools simplify the package design steps by allowing predicting in advance the required window of packaging permeability for maintaining the quality and safety of the packed food. In addition to the gas permeation properties, the design of biodegradable packaging for fresh foods must take into account numerous other factors such as the cost, availability, potential contaminants of raw materials, process ability, preferences of consumer, waste management constraints, etc. In the EcoBioCap project, knowledge engineering method and tools are designed to store, share and use information regarding packaging material and to solve the dilemma of multi-criteria demands. Databases gathering most of the relevant information as regard fresh producer and packaging material are currently developed and used in connexion with the Tailorpack software. A specific methodology has been developed to query those databases when user's preferences are bipolar (i.e., express both constraints and wishes about the desired result). Results are then completely ordered with respect to these bipolar preferences, giving priority to constraints over wishes. This approach has permitted to build a Decision Support System for designing biodegradable packaging for fresh produces. This decision making tool will be useful for the development of new added-value materials for food packaging application from locally available and poorly valorised solid by-products and liquid effluents.

International audience; This paper presents an information system developed to help the assessment of the microbiological risk in food products. UQS (Unified Querying System) is composed of two distinct bases (a relational database and a conceptual graph knowledge base) which are integrated by means of a uniform querying language. The specificity of the system is that both bases include fuzzy data. Moreover, UQS allows the expression of preferences into the queries, by means of the fuzzy set theory.

This work is part of a national project which aims at building a tool for the analysis of microbiological risks in food products. As a first step, we propose a unified querying system which simultaneously scans two complementary bases, containing microbiological information : a relational database containing structured information and a conceptual graph knowledge base containing semi-structured information. The unified querying system sends the user's query to both of them. Fuzzy queries and imprecise information are handled in both bases. To achieve this goal, we propose a way of representing fuzzy values, including numerical values, in conceptual graphs.