Click on “Download PDF” for the PDF version or on the title for the HTML version.

If you are not an ASABE member or if your employer has not arranged for access to the full-text, Click here for options.

For many years, the use of IT in an organization was centered in the organization itself. The integration of its processes and information systems was pursued for process planning and decision making. Due to health and legal issues, new traceability needs emerged in companies belonging to the same productive chain: information traceability. Data exchange between the chain components is a very important requirement for full information traceability process practice in productive chains, and one of the greatest challenges to be overcome is the current heterogeneity present at many organizational levels. In search of interoperability between information systems, ontologies have been used as important tools for pattern identification in data exchange and the creation of more flexible communication protocols, through an additional perspective on data description task and information sharing. On the other hand, Fish Farming has become more and more important in the last two decades in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazilian center-west, and the demand for information traceability has pushed the entities involved into the search of ad-hoc means to control their production and inputs. Based upon a previous work on the fish farming productive chain in Mato Grosso do Sul, the main motivation of this work is to present a diagnosis about the traceability for this sector. The aim is to evaluate the use of ontologies for the representation of data related to the components of the chain, in order to support the establishment of communication protocols and to increase information sharing among several organizations.