# AgriEnt: A Knowledge-Based Web Platform for Managing Insect Pests of Field Crops
## 3 AgriEnt: Architecture
### Semantic Layer
#### 3.2.1 AgriEnt-Ontology  
One of the most important phases of the development of a knowledge-based system is the development of a domain ontology [37]. From this perspective, this platform uses the AgriEnt-Ontology to represent knowledge about crops, diseases, symptoms, insects, insect pests, and treatment recommendations. This knowledge is represented in a formal way consisting of concepts, relationships, individuals, and axioms. In this way, the ontology can be shared and reused whenever necessary. The ontology was modelled by using Protege [38], an ontology development platform that allows editing ontologies in the Web Ontology Language (OWL), accessing description logic reasoners, as well as acquiring instances for semantic markup. The ontology development process followed the Methontology [39] knowledge engineering methodology. An excerpt from the AgriEnt-Ontology is illustrated in Figure 2.  
The knowledge described by this ontology was collected from crop insect pests' records generated by agricultural entomology experts as well as academic publications. Furthermore, the design of this ontology considered already available ontologies such as (1) the Plant Disease Ontology [40], (2) the Ontology for Plan Protection [41], and (3) a plant disease extension of the IDO (Infectious Disease Ontology) ontology [42]. The Plant Disease Ontology describes information about the anatomy, morphology, genomics and proteomics of plants. Meanwhile, the Ontology for Plan Protection describes activities related to cereal plan protection. The IDO ontology covers infectious plant diseases and pathogens. Finally, it is worth noting that the AgriEnt-Ontology was validated by researchers from the Agrarian University of Ecuador with experience on insect pest's management. Table 2 describes the main classes on the AgriEnt-Ontology and provides some examples of instances contained by the knowledge base. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Concept** & **Description** & **Instances Examples** \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{Crop} & It refers to a taxonomy of cultivated plants that & \\  & grown as food, especially a grain, fruit, or & \\  & vegetable. & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Insect pest} & It refers to a taxonomy of insects that reduce yields & _Chilo infuscatellus_, _Scriophaga excertalis_, _Pyrilla_ \\  & and spread virus diseases by feeding on the plants. & _perprusilla_ \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{Symptom} & It refers to a taxonomy of symptoms i.e., phenomes & \\  & accompanying something and is regarded as & \\  & evidence of its existence [24]. & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Disease} & It refers to a taxonomy of diseases that affect crops. & Red Rott (_Colletotrichatum falcatum_), Smut (_Litstilago_ \\  & & _scattaminea_), Pineapple Disease (_Centocystis puradox_) \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Treatment} & It consists of a taxonomy of treatments for & Release Ichneumonid parasitoid; Provide adequate \\  & controlling insect pests. & irrigation; Crop rotation in endemic areas \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Classes defined by the AgriEnt-Ontology. Figure 2: An excerpt from the AgriEnt-Ontology. The main classes defined by AgriEnt-Ontology are Crop, Insect pest, Symptom, Disease, and Treatment. All these classes are disjoint classes to prevent an individual from being defined as an instance of more than one class. Currently, the ontology contains information about common crops in Ecuador such as sugarcane, cocoa, corn, rice, banana, and soy; as well as common insect pests that affect them. Also, this ontology describes diseases that can be caused by the such insect pests. Finally, this ontology collects treatments to deal with insect pests. These treatments were validated by a group of domain experts. AgriEnt-Ontology defines a set of object properties that allows relations between the classes to be established. Through these properties is possible to perform the crop insect pest diagnosis as well as to provide suitable treatments.