The Nutrien Digital Agriculture Centre (NDAC) develops accessible, data driven research platforms that support interdisciplinary collaboration. We're a university-wide hub for student training and engagement with key stakeholders. And we strengthen sustainability across the agricultural value chain.

The Nutrien Digital Agriculture Centre:

  • Serves as a university‑wide hub for sustainable digital agriculture, with governance, staffing and infrastructure dedicated to shared platforms.
  • Provides a collaborative research and training space in the University of Saskatchewan Agriculture Building, while also being a gathering place for stakeholders in digital agriculture.
  • Provides long‑term stewardship of and develops research platforms in Geospatial Agroecosystem Inference Generator (GAIG), UAV (drone) crop phenotyping, smart‑farms, on-farm experimentation and analytical pipelines that no single department can sustain alone.
  • Offers a coherent entry point for partners seeking collaboration in digital agriculture.
  • Enables high‑risk, high‑reward research by providing core technical capacity and shared infrastructure.
  • Advances AI driven analytical methods.
  • Catalyzes new initiatives and innovations through seed-funding opportunities targeted at new research collaborations and new faculty.
  • Elevates visibility and impact of USask’s digital agriculture work as a recognized national and global leader.
  • Enables education opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and professionals, supporting the Precision Agriculture Certificate, the NSERC CREATE Computational Agriculture Program and future training pathways.
Director of the Nutrien Digital Agriculture Centre Dr. Steve Shirtliffe's TEDx talk: "I know what you grew last summer: Exploring AI in agriculture." Drawing from his roots on a Prairie farm and his career pioneering agriculture research, this talk explores how drones, satellite imagery and AI unlock new ways to manage crops and land.