Dotmatics Implements Initiative with BASF Agricultural Solutions

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  All steps of the data lifecycle are handled by Dotmatics’ unified data-centric platform.

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  Scientific knowledge of BASF Agricultural Solutions is continuously enriched via Dotmatics’ electronic lab notebook (ELN).

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  Enhanced insights are achieved with unhindered access to highly curated quality data combined with advanced visual analytics and data automation.

Bishop’s Stortford, UK, 30 March 2021: Dotmatics Ltd, a scientific informatics software and services company that drives the automation of laboratory data workflows for scientific discovery and innovation research, announced the implementation of a ‘Data to Value’ Initiative with BASF Agricultural Solutions.

Research and development are crucial to BASF’s Agricultural Solutions division, leading to innovations that are key to finding the right balance for farmers, agriculture, and future generations. To cope with increasingly complex and comprehensive data in R&D, Dotmatics and BASF Agricultural Solutions collaborated to enhance the division’s R&D IT infrastructure.

With a 3-step phased approach, BASF Agricultural Solutions successfully reached the goals of the ‘Data to Value’ project. As a result, all steps of the data lifecycle—experiment planning, sample creation, testing, and scientific analysis—are now handled by Dotmatics’ unified data-centric platform, providing BASF’s researchers with enhanced insights into highly curated quality data.

The Dotmatics electronic lab notebook (ELN) directly feeds data into the Agricultural Solutions division knowledge base as part of the execution of scientific workflows, by capturing experimental data and storing it in a usable format. Joachim Dickhaut, Senior Principal Scientist at BASF Agricultural Solutions, commented: “The early involvement of end users is crucial for the success of new solutions such as the ELN. Our power users built the system together with Dotmatics’ experts which made it ‘their’ solution. This contributed to the fact that they were very open to the new system and had a positive attitude towards it.”

The Dotmatics platform also allows searching across experimental and project results generated by BASF Agricultural Solutions’ global R&D team. Dickhaut added: “Scientists need the ability to do a variety of searches, looking over multiple experiments or across many projects.”

With Dotmatics, data scientists at BASF Agricultural Solutions now have enhanced data search, aggregation, and visual analytics capabilities. This supports the division’s data-driven decision making that is based on all available research findings and prior knowledge, enhancing and simplifying processes in R&D. Unhindered access to high quality curated data combined with advanced analytics and data automation allows scientists to gain insights that were not possible before. Dickhaut noted: “One thing became clear very quickly: with the new software, the data we gained over the years became much more visible to our researchers.”

Max Petersen, Associate VP Product Marketing at Dotmatics, commented: “Data utilization is the highest priority for research-driven organizations looking to innovate based on a wealth of knowledge. It has been a pleasure to work with the team from BASF Agricultural Solutions and to ensure scientists are given access to data in a meaningful way so that they can innovate for their customers.”