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A recent ZooKeys’ paper (Mesibov, 2013: http://www.pensoft.net/journal_home_page.php?journal_id=1&page=article&SESID=df7bcb35b02603283dcb83ee0e0af0c9&type=show&article_id=5111) has highlighted data quality issues in aggregated data sets, but did not provide a realistic way to address these issues. This paper provides an aggregator’s perspective including ways that the whole community can help to address data quality issues. The establishment of GBIF and national nodes (national aggregators) such as the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) have integrated and exposed a huge diversity of biological observations along with many associated issues. Much of the admirable work by Mesibov (2013) was enabled bythe data exposed.Data quality, one of the highest priorities for GBIF, the national nodes and other aggregators, depends on both automatic methods and community experts to detect and correct data issues. Not all issues can however be automatically detected or corrected, so community assistance is needed to help improve the quality of exposed biological data. We do need to improve the infrastructure and associated processes to more easily identify data issues and document all changes to ensure a full record is permanently and publicly available.

Sustainable food production depends on well functioning agro-biological ecosystems: a diversity of living organisms—the biodiversity—plays a critical role in the function of these ecosystems, particularly in the way in which biotic and abiotic processes shape agricultural productivity and sustainability. Biological collections are the repository for this biodiversity information and there is a strong track record of the knowledge generated from these collections improving sustainable food production and ultimately food security. However, the way these collections are used, and indeed what they are comprised of, is undergoing rapid change. The collections themselves are moving from repositories of our flora and fauna to warehouses of species data, spatial ecosystem models, digital images, tissues, genetic sequences and information. Furthermore, our tools include genomics and informatics which provide an explosion of information that we now can mine in new ways we have never been able to do before. One example is the Atlas of Living Australia that will bring together all relevant biological knowledge of Australia’s biota. But we need to do more, including using automation to harvest new knowledge and insights. It is critical that our science remains at the forefront with our collections being connected at a global level if we are to make a genuine difference. It will be a challenge to fund what is required, but we need to remember that what we are talking about is life on earth. There are exciting opportunities to more effectively manage and value our biodiversity as well as deliver biosecurity to maintain our productivity and prosperity as a nation. Our national efforts can also contribute to global solutions to challenges such as food security and environment degradation.

It is easy to assume that the public sector dominates assistance to smallholders in the developing world, including in the provision of research and development. These proceedings have illustrated that this is not always the case and that the private sector can and needs to be engaged, even in early stages of agricultural development. In Australia, private-sector investment is low relative to that in many other developed countries. However, over the past two decades we have seen an increase in that investment through a variety of means, including the growth of rural research and development corporations and more recently, in public–private partnerships in plant breeding. This increase has enabled public-sector investment to shift to tackle emerging challenges for the agricultural sector. Both domestically and internationally, these new models of collaboration between the public and private sector are reframing agricultural research.