Rapid deployment of a trusted research environment for agricultural data science at DairyNZ

Trusted Research Environments (TREs) provide secure, auditable, and governed access to sensitive research data—essential in sectors like agriculture, where information spans farm operations, animal health, environmental monitoring, economics and so on. DairyNZ required a rapidly deployable TRE that balanced speed, security, and reproducibility to support multi-disciplinary research and digital transformation at the organisation.Leveraging DairyNZ’s existing infrastructure, we adopted a “Modern Data and Science Workflows” (MDSWF) model built entirely from enterprise-approved components to reduce setup friction and to provide the science and modelling teams required infrastructure for end-to-end-data science.ABOUT THE AUTHORDr Mubashir Qasim is a Senior Economist at DairyNZ and a Principal Investigator with Te Pūnaha Matatini. He specialises in macroeconomic modelling, predictive analytics, machine learning, and web applications for agriculture. His research focuses on enhancing farm productivity and sustainability through data-driven decision tools. He has published widely in economics and data science and developed several DairyNZ applications including Econ Tracker and the Cultivar Selector Tool for the Forage Value Index. Mubashir currently leads the implementation of modern data science tools at DairyNZ, advancing secure, reproducible, and scalable analytics across research programmes. -----For more information about the eResearch NZ / eRangahau Aotearoa conference, visit: https://eresearchnz.co.nz/