Nutrien Centre for Sustainable and Digital Agriculture
About
The Nutrien Centre for Digital and Sustainable Agriculture advances research, teaching, and innovation to accelerate farming into the digital age—creating more sustainable and resilient food systems.
VISION
Our vision is to advance, and position Saskatchewan as a global leader in sustainable digital agriculture.
MISSION
Our mission is to advance sustainable digital agriculture by developing accessible data driven research platforms that support interdisciplinary collaboration and serve as a hub for student training and engagement with key stakeholders, strengthening sustainability across the agricultural value chain.
GOALS
Provide a collaborative research and training space in the University of Saskatchewan Agriculture Building as gathering place for stakeholders in digital agriculture.
Develop collaborative research platforms including Geospatial Agroecosystem Inference Generator (GAIG), High‑Throughput Crop Phenomics (UAV Program), Smart Farms and On‑Farm Experimentation, and Genomics Analysis.
Lead large collaborative research initiatives in areas of sustainable digital agriculture.
Enhance collaborative networks across campus and across our broader innovation ecosystem, identify opportunities through workshops and symposia.
Catalyze new initiatives and innovations through seed-funding opportunities targeted at new research collaborations and new faculty.
Advance AI driven analytical methods to improve the efficiency and sustainability of agriculture, positioning USask as a centre of expertise in agricultural AI.
Elevate visibility and impact of USask’s digital agriculture work as a recognized national and global leader.
Serve as a training hub for undergraduate and graduate students and professionals, supporting the Precision Agriculture Certificate, the NSERC CREATE Computational Agriculture program, and future training pathways.
Research
Researchers collaborate across the USask campus and beyond to explore and develop technologies that can help food systems become more sustainable and resilient, along the entire value chain.
RESEARCH PLATFORMS
Geospatial Agroecosystem Inference Generator (GAIG)
The Geospatial Agroecosystem Inference Generator (GAIG) is the centre’s flagship geospatial AI platform, designed to model, quantify, and value agroecosystem services across western Canada with wall-to-wall 10‑metre spatial resolution. GAIG acts as a digital twin of the western Canadian Agro-ecosystem and by incorporating AI driven analyses allows optimization of sustainability. It integrates multi-year satellite Earth observation, soil, topographic, hydrological and weather data, and allows us to use ground referenced data to infer decision‑relevant analytics at a sub-field scale.
High‑Throughput Crop Phenomics (UAV Program)
The centre’s UAV Crop Phenomics platform delivers high‑throughput, multi‑spectral drone imaging that supports plant breeding, crop physiology, and agronomic research. The platform features standardized workflows for utilizing multi-spectral and thermal UAVs for large scale imaging of field plots within plant breeding programs. This platform benefits from a dedicated phenotyping van, multispectral UAV fleet, experienced field crew, and strong cross‑college expertise in computer science and engineering.
Smart Farms and On‑Farm Experimentation
The College of Agriculture and Bioresources has digitized field research facilities including the Rayner Dairy Research and Teaching Facility, the Livestock and Feed Centre of Excellence, the Kernen Crop Research Farm and the Herman Austensen Research Farm. The centre will collaborate with these facilities to explore specific data pipelines to facilitate AI driven data analytics to further sustainable agricultural research.
The Digital Agronomy portion of the Smart Farm platform focuses on field‑scale decision support through integration of producer data, experimental designs, and analytics to optimize on‑farm practices under real‑world conditions.
Genomic Analysis
The centre will work to provide the computational requirements and access to AI to allow for the analysis of genomic data for the sustainable digital agriculture cluster hire in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources.
Education and Training
Working with academic units at USask, the Nutrien Centre for Sustainable and Digital Agriculture serves as a training hub for undergraduate and graduate students and professionals. By integrating platform‑level data, real‑world field experiences, and advanced analytics, the centre supports training of the next generation of agricultural data scientists, agronomists, AI specialists, and sustainability professionals.
Contact
Dr. Steve Shirtliffe (PhD)
Director, Nutrien Centre for Sustainable and Digital Agriculture
steve.shirtliffe@usask.ca
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