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University of Guelph receives $6.6 million to propel genomics research and agriculture innovations

The University of Guelph has been promised $6.6 million in federal funds for two new genomics hubs that will impact climate-smart agriculture and genomics research.

In a recent press release, the university announced the contributions from Genome Canada and other research partners that will result in a total of more than $15.8 million over five years.

The hubs, the Agricultural Genomics Action Centre and the Climate Smart-Data Collaboration Centre, will share information across the interdisciplinary challenge teams (ICT) projects and beyond, with the goal of maximising the impact of the research.

The Agricultural Genomics Action Centre will be supported by $2 million from Genome Canada, through Ontario Genomics.

The project aims to bring together participants across the genomics ecosystem, support teams in their mobilization and commercialization of project knowledge, train researchers and students and synthesize learnings from across projects to inform agri-food policy and practice.

“Genome Canada’s support for a data collaboration ecosystem will help researchers and partners to get more value from their data, encourage collaboration and ensure that cutting-edge research information is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable” said Michelle Edwards, project leader for the Climate Smart-Data Collaboration Centre, in the release.

The Agricultural Genomics Action Centre will be led by Shantz and Jessica Bowes, assistant vice-president, research innovation and knowledge mobilization, at U of G, alongside Dr. Lupin Battersby of Simon Fraser University and Dr. Nancy Tout of the Global Institute for Food Security at the University of Saskatchewan.

The Climate Smart-Data Collaboration Centre will be supported by $4 million from Genome Canada. The project will focus on research data sharing, management and governance across projects.

The Climate Smart-Data Collaboration Centre aims to create a data ecosystem featuring common frameworks for data exchange and sharing, community-developed data standards, open-source and reusable data processing toolkits, consensus-driven data governance and training to develop community data competency.

It will be led by Dr. Michelle Edwards, director, Agri-Food Data Canada at U of G, alongside Dr. William Hsiao of Simon Fraser University and Dr. Claude Robert of the Université Laval.

“These investments will add to the incredible capacity in agri-food research, data and knowledge mobilization already centred at U of G, building on the expertise of institutes such as the Research Innovation Office, Food from Thought, Agri-Food Data Canada and the Arrell Food Institute,” said Dr. Rene van Acker, vice-president, research and innovation at U of G, in the release.

In addition to core funding provided by Genome Canada, the hubs will also receive $2 million in funding from the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

“These cross-cutting hubs represent an innovative new way of funding knowledge mobilization and data coordination across a portfolio of projects, enabling the sharing of knowledge and data, strengthening connections between academic institutions, governments and industry, and supporting the delivery of positive economic, environmental and societal outcomes for Canada,” said Elizabeth Shantz, one of the project leaders for the Agricultural Genomics Action Centre and knowledge mobilization manager at the Arrell Food Institute, in the release.

More information on the project can be found here.