GEMS Exchange FAQs

GEMS Exchange is readily accessed through the RapidAPI marketplace. Links to a landing page for each API with descriptions are provided below for your convenience. And each API landing page links to the correct RapidAPI page which has subscription information and pricing, a link to the endpoint, OpenAPI documentation to test out functionality, and a tutorial. The tutorial makes it very clear how to use each API endpoint in your own custom programming code. Our overriding goal is to provide scientific-grade data in research-ready form that lowers the cost (and time) of getting on with your own research.

The APIs are back-end data streams that are used to solve agri-food challenges. Aside from the GEMS Exchange PreView on this page, which allows you to toggle various API streams on and off, most activities require you to embed the APIs in your own custom programming code. However, we are reaching out to other organizations and expect to see an increasing number of commonly used visualization platforms utilize our APIs on the backend.

Currently, the two most common languages used in data science can be used, R and Python.

Yes! Open notebook within a JupyterHub session in GEMS, check out the tutorial video for each API, and you are ready to go.

You can use the GEMS Exchange APIs from anywhere within your Python or R code. On your laptop, from a remote machine, or from within GEMS in your browser.

The GEMS Grid is a hierarchical Discrete Global Gridding System (DGGS), in that it divides up the (Ag-relevant) planet (i.e., Global minus the oceans and Antarctica) into discrete grid cells at varying resolutions. The crudest resolution level has 36 km grid spacing. All grid cells at subsequent levels with finer resolution fit perfectly into their parent cells, with the finest level of cells splitting the terrain into 1 meter squares. The GEMS Grid API has all the functionality you need to map lon lat coordinates on the grid, locate parents, children and neighbors, and aggregate up to cruder levels based on specified rules (e.g., mean, min, max, sum). Read more here!

GEMS has prioritized the creation of new APIs based on how they (1) fit into the needs of the GEMS research objectives, (2) interoperate with existing APIs, and (3) align with the requests of multiple GEMS community members.

The analytics underpinning each GEMS API is designed to be extensible. If your crop, or details thereof (such as the coverage of traits or agro-ecologies in our multitrait predictor tool) are not in the Exchange we are certainly open to consider adding it. We are, after all, rooted firmly in a discovery driven university! 

To enquire, contact the GEMS Solutions team. Please include details of the crop, particular problem, and country coverage of concern and we will get back in touch.

We are about data driven solutions for the agri-food sector from molecule to market. The GEMS team is distinguished by its transdisciplinary expertise linking cutting-edge data science to the disciplinary domains spanning the food, agriculture and natural resource sciences. Translational R&D is also in our DNA – professional papers and kudos are good, real world impact is paramount. We work on pre-, on- and post-farm problems from ideation, through basic, applied, pre-commercial and commercial innovation. 

If you think your problem might be a good fit for us, by all means get in touch with our GEMS Solutions team here. If we can’t help, we may know who might be able to.