Dr. Ian Stavness (PhD), is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at USask, P2IRC Program Director, and an Enhancement Chair at GIFS.
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.
Today, the success of P2IRC’s interdisciplinary training informs the experience of graduate students through the NSERC CREATE Grant in Computational Agriculture, which is fostering further collaboration between plant and computer sciences at USask.
Additionally, many of the programs and technical services that GIFS provides to researchers today are rooted in P2IRC-supported projects. To date, these initiatives have generated more than $4 million in commercial revenue — a tally that exceeds P2IRC’s original goals and is continuing to grow as GIFS’ team fosters new partnerships.
The following highlights a small sample of the impactful innovations delivered through the P2IRC program that GIFS is continuing to advance.
Omics and Precision Analytics Laboratory at GIFS
Through P2IRC-supported projects and research, GIFS established a world-class platform for omics technologies. Today, its Omics and Precision Analytics Laboratory is one of Canada’s largest high-throughput sequencing and genotyping facilities.
Leveraging next-generation sequencing technologies, GIFS’ team is serving researchers and organizations from around the world who are accessing a suite of genomics, transcriptomics, and bioinformatics services.
In 2025, GIFS was recognized for the high-quality data that it delivers through these services, becoming Canada’s first Revio PacBio Certified Service Provider.
Learn more about genomics, transcriptomics, and bioinformatics at GIFS at gifs.ca/technical-services.
PlotVision
One of P2IRC’s research themes focused on developing new technologies and practices to help plant breeders collect field data more quickly.
This effort led to the creation of PlotVision, a one-stop, cloud-based UAV image-processing and analysis pipeline for agricultural researchers. The tool helps researchers to process drone imagery of field plots, generating valuable phenotyping data and visualizations that provide crucial information.
- Watch: PlotVision overview
Today, PlotVision is part of the high-throughput phenotyping capabilities GIFS offers to researchers and organizations through the FCC Accelerated Breeding Program at GIFS. Learn more at plotvision.gifs.ca.
GHG emissions reduction through no-till practices
P2IRC also supported important research in the social sciences, exploring socioeconomic and regulatory barriers that can delay the adoption and widespread use of agricultural innovations.
This includes studies exploring how innovations, including no- and minimal-tillage, have reduced greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.
Since then, GIFS has continued to build on this work through carbon life cycle analyses examining the production of Canadian agricultural commodities. These studies show how innovation is driving sustainability in Canadian agriculture by giving farmers tools and technologies to produce some of the least carbon-intensive commodities in the world.
These and other initiatives provide insights into the agriculture sector’s contributions to sustainable outcomes. They can also help to inform science-based policies and regulations that support the adoption of new innovations enhancing the sustainable and resilient production of safe, nutritious food.
“The Plant Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre at USask represents a significant undertaking that was made possible through our collaborators and funders, as well as the great leadership of Dr. Ian Stavness (PhD) and Dr. Andrew Sharpe (PhD), Senior Research Scientist at GIFS, who was the initial program chair,” said Dr. Steven Webb (PhD), GIFS CEO.
“Working with partners across industry, government, and academia, P2IRC-supported projects generated knowledge, trained new researchers, and established world-class infrastructure and expertise at GIFS and USask. This powerful and lasting legacy is advancing innovation today and will continue to do so into the future.”
For more on P2IRC and its history, see p2irc.usask.ca. Additional information on GIFS’ technical services is available at gifs.ca/technical-services.