Precision agriculture, artificial intelligence and machine learning are generating massive amounts of data across farms, agri-businesses and research labs.
University of Guelph researchers looking to reduce pregnancy losses in dairy cattle are also milking the benefits of a new data portal intended to improve livestock productivity in Ontario.
The dual projects came together at the Ontario Dairy Research Centre (ODRC) in Elora, Ont., which is owned by the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario (ARIO) and managed by the University of Guelph through the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance.
In this research funded in part by the Alliance, Dr. Wanhong Yang, Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics at the University of Guelph, created a GIS modelling tool that addresses the complexity of a typical watershed evaluation for beneficial management practices (BMPs), along with a user-friendly system developed for creating BMP scenarios and evaluating their effects and outcomes.
A University of Guelph researcher is using automated data collection to help farmers create individual feeding plans to improve the health and production of their dairy cows.
Patty Kedzierski, a PhD candidate and highly qualified personnel (HQP) scholar in the Department of Animal Biosciences at the Ontario Agricultural College, studies production differences between dairy cows.
Protecting human and poultry health is the goal of University of Guelph researchers developing an artificial intelligence (AI) system to predict early outbreaks of avian influenza.
Dr. Rozita Dara, a professor in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, is working with Dr. Shayan Sharif and Dr. Zvonimir Poljak, professors in the Ontario Veterinary College, and postdoctoral scholar Samira Yousefinaghani to build a surveillance system that can predict the occurrence of avian influenza in a region.