Flexible scientific data management for plant phenomics research

In this paper, we expand on the design and implementation of the Phenomics Ontology Driven Data repository [1] (PODD) with respect to the capture, storage and retrieval of data and metadata generated at the High Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre (Canberra, Australia). PODD is a schema-driven Semantic Web database which uses the Resource Description Framework (RDF) model to store semi-structured information. RDF allows PODD to process information about a range of phenomics experiments without needing to define a universal schema for all of the different structures. To illustrate the process, exemplar datasets were generated using a medium throughput, high resolution, three-dimensional digitisation system purposely built for studying plant structure and function simultaneously under specific environmental conditions. The High Performance Compute (HPC), storage and data collection publication aspects of the workflow and their realisation in CSIRO infrastructure are also discussed along with their relationship to PODD.