U of G gains federal funding to further genomics research in ag.
By Andrew Joseph, Farms.com; Photo courtesy of the University of Guelph
Agriculture and food systems have enormous potential to help Canada mitigate and adapt to the impacts of a changing climate. Our genomics research in agri-food is helping to drive sustainable solutions to major global challenges.
As a world leader in agri-food genomics, the University of Guelph is contributing to high-impact research, innovations, and knowledge mobilization to improve lives, strengthen communities, and drive economic growth. Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne has announced $6.6 million in federal support from Genome Canada for two new genomic hubs co-hosted by the University of Guelph.
Founded in 2000, Genome Canada is a non-profit organization that uses genomics-based technologies to improve the lives of Canadians. It is funded by the government of Canada.
The hubs—the Agricultural Genomics Action Centre and the Climate Smart-Data Collaboration Centre—will work together to maximize the impact of climate-smart agriculture and genomics research.
Including contributions from other research partners as well as funding from Genome Canada, these initiatives represent a total investment of more than $15.8 million over five years.
Genome Canada’s Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Systems initiative will fund the hubs as well as nine interdisciplinary challenge teams (ICT) to investigate how Canada can continue to build resiliency, sustainability, and economic growth within our agri-food sector while reducing carbon emissions.
Each hub will support the sharing of information across the ICT projects and beyond to maximize the impact of this important research.
Crucial agri-food knowledge
“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,” stated Elizabeth Shantz, one of the project leaders for the Agricultural Genomics Action Centre and knowledge mobilization manager at the Arrell Food Institute.
The Agricultural Genomics Action Centre will be supported by $2 million from Genome Canada, through Ontario Genomics, 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.
It will be led by Shantz and Jessica Bowes, the 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 to support research data sharing, management, and governance across projects by creating 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 of Agri-Food Data Canada at the U of G, alongside Dr. William Hsiao of Simon Fraser University and Dr. Claude Robert of the Université Laval.
“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,” commented Michelle Edwards, project leader for the Climate Smart-Data Collaboration Centre.
Climate-smart agriculture, genomics research
U of G is also home to one of the nine ICT projects, Leveraging Genomics to Achieve Dairy Net-Zero, led by Dr. Christine Baes and Dr. Filippo Miglior in the Department of Animal Biosciences at the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC), which will develop a roadmap to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in dairy production.
Dr. Mike von Massow, a professor in the Department of Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics at OAC, is the co-lead of another ICT project looking at the scalable production of cultivated meat.
“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 addition to the core funding provided by Genome Canada, the hubs will also receive $2 million in funding from the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities. Support has also been provided by Ontario Genomics, in partnership with Genome B.C., Genome Prairie, and Genome Québec.
Additional project partners include Research Impact Canada, Simon Fraser University, the University of Saskatchewan, the Université de Montréal, Genome Québec, Université Laval, McGill University, the University of Manitoba, and private companies including the Central Standards Association, DNAstack, DRAC, USDA, CCMB, and Ilumina.