P2IRC: Interdisciplinary research at USask delivers results for Canadian agriculture

An ambitious research and training initiative at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) has delivered on its mission to enhance agricultural research and development.

Today, researchers around the world are benefitting from the knowledge, technologies, and capabilities established through the Plant Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre (P2IRC) at USask, which was launched in 2015 with the support of a $37.2 million grant from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund.

While P2IRC, which was managed by the Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS) at USask, completed its work in 2024, its positive impact lives on through current initiatives at GIFS and USask.

“The Plant Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre at USask was a visionary initiative to advance computational agriculture, bioinformatics, genomics, and crop phenotyping,” said Dr. Ian Stavness (PhD), a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at USask, P2IRC Program Director, and an Enhancement Chair at GIFS.

“P2IRC was not only ambitious, it was also incredibly successful — fostering collaborations across computer science, engineering, and plant and soil sciences. Together, these partners advanced research and development that has brought new expertise to the workforce, generated valuable new tools, and created commercial activities benefitting the research community.”

P2IRC Highlights  

P2IRC strengthened Canada’s leadership in agricultural research and development by enhancing expertise and pioneering new technologies and approaches, including novel genomics analyses and visualizations.

Collaboration between academia and industry was foundational to this work, engaging over 200 partners around the world. Along the way, these initiatives produced more than 430 published research papers while training more than 450 individuals who have now established careers across the agriculture and technology sectors.