Semantic annotation of the CEREALAB database by the AGROVOC linked dataset

The objective of the CEREALAB database is to help the breeders in choosing molecular markers associated to the most important traits. Phenotypic and genotypic data obtained from the integration of open source databases with the data obtained by the CEREALAB project are made available to the users. The CEREALAB database has been and is currently extensively used within the frame of the CEREALAB project. This paper presents the main achievements and the ongoing research to annotate the CEREALAB database and to publish it in the Linking Open Data network, in order to facilitate breeders and geneticists in searching and exploiting linked agricultural resources. One of the main focus of this paper is to discuss the use of the AGROVOC Linked Dataset both to annotate the CEREALAB schema and to discover schema-level mappings among the CEREALAB Dataset and other resources of the Linking Open Data network, such as NALT, the National Agricultural Library Thesaurus, and DBpedia. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.