Research Centre Data Access

Working in partnership with the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, ADC has helped improve access to data generated through the Ontario Agri-Food Research Centres.  Prior to 2018, researchers were required to travel in person to the Ontario Dairy Research Centre in Elora to access data that was only available on farm workstations. After downloading datasets to portable USB drives, researchers returned to campus to filter, organize, and prepare the data for analysis. This process was time-consuming, inefficient, and posed security risks, while travel requirements created an additional barrier to timely data access.

Between 2019 and 2021, the first online data portal was developed under the leadership of Dr. Rozita Dara, Professor in the School of Computer Science, College of Computational, Mathematical and Physical Sciences. This foundational work  enabled researchers to access key datasets remotely from campus, significantly improving the speed, convenience, and security of data access.

As research needs became more complex and digital technologies evolved, a second-generation data platform was developed in 2022 and launched in early 2023 under the leadership of Dr. Lucas Alcantara.  Data pipelines were established to integrate information from multiple sources into a centralized data lake, which was made accessible through an R Shiny-based data portal. During this phase, a dedicated data portal for the Ontario Beef Research Centre was also developed, providing researchers with streamlined access to feeding and production data collected at the facility.

Today, Dr. Andrew Frewin, Manager, Research Centre Data, has taken over the management and continued development of the data portals.  Increasing data security while updating hardware has been the current priority, with increased beef, swine, crops, and aquaculture data access on the horizon.

Together, these developments have transformed research data management within Ontario’s agri-food research ecosystem, improving accessibility, enhancing data security, and enabling more efficient use of valuable research datasets.

Visit the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance website  to learn more about Ontario’s cross-province network of agri-food research centres, or select from one of the available data portals to learn more.

Available Data Portals 

Please note that you will need a login to access the Ontario Dairy Research Centre Data Portal.  

Ontario Dairy Research Centre Data Portal     email: odrcdata@uoguelph.ca
Ontario Beef Research Centre Data Portal      email: obrcdata@uoguelph.ca
Ontario Swine Research Centre Data Portal        email: osrcdata@uoguelph.ca
Coming Soon:  Long Term Cropping Trial Data Portal      email: edwardsm@uoguelph.ca 

Ontario Agri-Food Research Centres are owned by Agricultural Research and Innovation Ontario, an agency of the Government of Ontario, and managed by the University of Guelph through the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance.