ELIXIR plant sciences community roadmap 2024-2029.

The ELIXIR Plant Sciences Community is an interdisciplinary group of researchers with diverse backgrounds from computer science to different fields of plant biology. We answer the needs of both bioinformaticians and plant biologists.
The Community objective is to develop services supporting the integration and linking of phenotypic, genotypic, omics (e.g. expression, metabolomics, etc.), environmental, and bibliographic data. The underlying scientific use cases encompass fundamental and applied plant sciences, including genetics, system biology and omics approaches, within the broader context of climate change, agroecology, food security, and sustainable agriculture.
To meet the current challenges in agriculture, the ELIXIR Community promotes tools, databases, standards, and best practices for plant research while developing joint initiatives such as international projects and events in collaboration with European infrastructures (EMPHASIS, AnaEE-ERIC, Euro-Bioimaging, METROFOOD-RI). The ELIXIR Community also supports the establishment of links to structuring national projects and initiatives such as NFDI in Germany, or the french Agroecology and ICT program.
Despite ongoing efforts, challenges remain, such as the continued scattering of plant molecular and cellular data, which hampers efficient data integration and reuse. Additionally, progressing toward a comprehensive agriculture data space is essential to address the interdisciplinary challenges that modern agriculture faces. Strengthening engagement with related research communities, such as those working on plant pathogens, is also a priority to ensure a holistic approach to plant science and agricultural research.
Finally the Plant Sciences Community links with other ELIXIR Communities and Focus Groups, in particular to contribute to the objectives and priority of the Biodiversity, Food Security and Pathogens and of the Cellular and Molecular Research scientific priority areas.