Applied Research Type: Agriculture

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Sharing the fruits of research: studying the state of the apple industry in the Okanagan

The amount of land in the Okanagan Valley dedicated to growing apples dropped by 35 per cent between 2001 and 2011 — a shift that led to substantial changes in the industry, with broad repercussions for processing and distribution, and inspired two Okanagan College School of Business professors, Lee Cartier and Svan Lembke, to examine the situation and the new opportunities it has given rise to.

Their work looked in particular at the links among “clusters” — the interconnected businesses, suppliers and other organizations in a geographic area that are all involved in the same industry. Cartier and Lembke found that focusing on common interests and encouraging groups in the cluster to share knowledge benefits everyone involved. At a cluster-wide workshop, the researchers also revealed opportunities to improve that had been missed and recommended adopting cluster-wide quality standards, developing new types of apples, improving production technologies and doing better marketing.

Two students participated in the project. One analyzed apple packing and sales data and did a trend analysis of it. The other summarized data from 17 in-depth interview, summarizing what she had learned from them. Working on this research project provided the students with a new understanding of how companies use research to inform their business practices.

The researchers’ recommendations on the best ways to exploit the collective power of the Okanagan apple cluster were discussed during a stakeholder workshop. The research showed the local cooperative organization, BC Tree Fruits (the largest employer in the cluster), was already enabling smaller firms to share equipment, get field service advice and pool their marketing and sales costs. However, the cooperative overall remained a minor player compared to some of the operations in Washington just the other side of the border and had not been aggressive in positioning products or trying new marketing approaches. After the workshop and armed with the research, the cooperative and other industry stakeholders created a list of actions to improve the performance of the conventional apple industry in the Okanagan.

Industry: Agriculture | Food
Partner(s): BC Tree Fruits
Funded by: College and Community Innovation Program, Engage Grant, NSERC

About Okanagan College

Situated in one of Canada’s most picturesque and dynamic regions, Okanagan College offers more than 130 different programs, and credentials that range from certificates to... Learn more
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Waste not, want not: Red River College and local microbreweries take an innovative approach to leftovers

Who knew there’s more to beer leftovers than what lingers in the bottom of a stubby at the end of a party?

Red River College and two local microbreweries in Winnipeg teamed up make use of the spent grain that’s left at the end of the brewing process, in an experiment that shows how far a little imagination and innovation can go. Together, they made a new kind of miso — the thick paste that’s normally made from fermented soy beans and is a staple of Japanese cooking.

Spent grain is a by-product of the brewing industry and generally used as animal feed. Finding innovative uses for it could help create more valuable commercial opportunities with a chance to bring new products to market — an important consideration as Canada’s microbrewery industry continues to thrive.

Red River College has been ramping up its culinary research since 2014 through new partnerships with industry and support from federal and provincial governments; the shift has led to many innovations with local producers — in this case, Farmery Estate Brewery and Torque Brewing Company. The college research chefs made soup, popcorn and pastries seasoned with pale malt miso from Farmery and dark malt miso from Torque.

“It was a good fit for us to partner with Red River College and utilize their culinary expertise to explore what could be done with our spent grains,” said Farmery owner Lawrence Warwaruk. “We’re all about adding value to the ingredients we grow and use in our beer, and that includes what happens to the by-products.”

Industry: Agriculture | Food
Funded by: Innovation Enhancement (IE) Grant

About Red River College Polytechnic

Red River College (RRC) is Manitoba’s largest institute of applied learning. The institution is renowned for providing accessible, innovative, applied learning and research in an... Learn more
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Finding new ways to use an old crop: Jerusalem artichokes bloom again

You may know Jerusalem artichokes primarily as the towering yellow daisies that overflow gardens in August and September; for Alberta startup NovaGreen, their value lies in what you can’t see: the tubers they grow underground.

Jerusalem artichokes (also called sunchokes) are a native North American sunflower species that was prized for the food value of its tubers by indigenous people and credited with helping to keep early settlers alive. Exported to Europe, it became popular at first as food for humans but later was used mostly as animal feed.

It fell out of favour in North America as well, until efforts to revive it gradually took hold in the 1990s and beyond. Its value today is chiefly the high concentrations of inulin (a prized source of fibre) and fructose it contains. Novagreen has developed a method for efficiently extracting inulin from Jerusalem artichokes.

According to Barry Farquharson, co-founder of Novagreen, the company’s partnership with Lakeland College “has helped us to get to this next level by providing and modifying commercial potato equipment for the project, as well as advancing the science of weed control, application of biochar to crop development, and more.”

“Their combination of agricultural knowhow, combined with a scientific approach, adds essential discipline and capability to project advancement.”

Industry: Agriculture

About Lakeland College

All colleges say they are educating the leaders of tomorrow. At Lakeland College in Alberta, our students are leading today. Students have the opportunity to... Learn more
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Strong, straight and nutritious: research to improve cereal crops

Keeping cereal crops healthy and strong over the summer gives them their best shot of producing a high yield of grain. How to achieve that is the focus of the cereal research taking place at Lakeland College, led by Laurel Perrott.

Recent research trials have had three main themes: in-season nitrogen fertility, optimal fungicide timing, and preventing lodging. Under the first theme, Perrott is studying the effect of applying additional nitrogen fertilizer on different varieties and classes of wheat after the crop has emerged, either early or later in the season.

She’s also studying barley foliar fungicide timing. Fungicides are commonly used in cereals to protect the green leaf area in the upper canopy, so the plant can continue producing the carbohydrates needed to fully fill the grain head, right until the end of the season. Perrott is testing fungicide timing under normal conditions and also where there’s high pressure from disease on the plants. Ultimately, this work will help growers know the optimum time for applying fungicides, depending on whether they rotate their crops more or less often.

Lodging (the displacement of roots or stems so stalks don’t grow straight) is a major headache for grain producers because it can lower yields and reduce their nutrient value. Perrott is tackling the problem through collaborative research. Until recently, growers had two tools available to them for combatting lodging — choosing to use only varieties known to grow straighter, and low nitrogen fertility.

Unfortunately, varieties that stand well do not always perform adequately in other ways, and low levels of nitrogen reduce yield. Although they are not yet registered for use on barley, Perrot is testing two “plant growth regulators” on it for their ability to shorten the stem of the crop and keep it standing, even where nitrogen fertility is high.

Industry: Agriculture

About Lakeland College

All colleges say they are educating the leaders of tomorrow. At Lakeland College in Alberta, our students are leading today. Students have the opportunity to... Learn more
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A bit of research today keeps the doctor away — from the apples

Apples, the fruit that famously keeps the doctor away, are getting some help to keep away unwanted visitors themselves. Ontario’s apple trees are facing damage from a new pest – the apple leaf curling midge. The galls (bumps that appear on leaves) produced by the midges can interfere with the normal growth and development of the terminal shoots of young apple trees, which delays or stunts their structural development.

It’s a particular problem in Durham Region, where the amount of land dedicated to growing apples has doubled in the last five years, because young trees are particularly affected, but apple growers across Ontario are struggling with the midges.

In this collaborative project, the Ontario Apple Growers Association approached Durham College for help finding a way to manage apple leaf curling midges. The first step was to select three apple orchards where data could be collected for a degree-day model (which establishes the rate of the midges’ growth, based on temperature). The researchers use that information for predicting and managing the midges’ development.

The researchers also identified biological control agents for the midges in the orchards and evaluated what impact spraying for midges might have on their survivability.

The project team developed two techniques to research the leaf-curling midges in the lab — one for studying the emergence of adult midges from pupa under different temperatures and the other for looking at the transfer of eggs from field samples to potted trees in the lab, to determine how midges successfully establish themselves on new trees.

The field data showed there are four adult “flights” over the summer and a partial flight in the fall. Egg counts increased very soon after each peak adult flight in May, late June, late July and late August. This is crucial information for effective use of insecticides to control the midges.

Two students from Durham College’s Food and Farming program completed the project in six months, collecting data from the three orchards and tabulating and analyzing it for predictions. Using various concepts, tools and techniques they had learned in the classroom to manage and analyze models for pest management gave the students an opportunity to apply their knowledge in a real-world, collaborative project.

All the 235 members of the Ontario Apple Growers Association will adopt management techniques from this project.

Industry: Agriculture | Food
Funded by: College and Community Innovation Program, Engage Grant, NSERC

About Durham College

At Durham College, the student experience comes first. With campuses in Oshawa and Whitby, Ont. along with a learning site in Pickering, the college offers... Learn more
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Not paving, but paradise — creating an organic garden

White Oaks Resort and Spa in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, wanted to convert 1,152 square feet of its property from grass into a sustainable garden. The area abuts a road and is exposed to high winds, car residue and pollution.

Michael Wakil, White Oaks’s chief development officer, said the original plan was to extend the resort’s parking lot but he just couldn’t go through with it. “I realized when you look out, it would just be asphalt. There’s the parking that’s already here, then a roadway and then [another] parking lot. That’s a lot of asphalt,” he said. “It’s been a dream and a vision for about three years, and finally we’ve started developing it,” he added.

Because White Oaks did not have the expertise to convert the neglected lawn, the key to taking action was to form a partnership with Niagara College’s Research and Innovation team. The college team consisted of a faculty research lead, a graduate student on the CICan Clean Tech internship program, and a junior co-op student. The project started in June and ended the following November.

The team began by exploring the best methods to build soil structure, converted the area from grass to an organic garden using sheet mulch and researched plant selections that would thrive in the roadside conditions. But it didn’t end there. The team also provided a plan for maintaining a healthy garden in the harsh conditions. As well, the hotel now grows its own produce that it uses in its restaurants and can showcase sustainable food and property use for its clients.

The partnership between Niagara College and White Oaks continued when the resort teamed up with the food and beverage innovation division to test different methods of preserving the garden’s produce for use year-round in a new White Oaks restaurant. Several jobs were created there, which takes the impact of the project even further.
At the conclusion of the project the graduate student was hired by Niagara College’s greenhouse as a technician to oversee greenhouse operations.

Funded by: CICan Careerlauncher Internships, Environment and Climate Change Canada

About Niagara College

Established in 1967, Niagara College has grown to become a leading global college and one of Canada’s most enterprising postsecondary institutions. With a mission to... Learn more
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Aqua Greens – From Seed to Restaurant

In a contest of whether Humber College or fish were more important in the success of Aqua Greens, a company that supplies organic greens to restaurants and markets in Toronto, the fish would probably win. But Humber would be a close second.

Tilapia are an essential part of the aquaponics system that Aqua Greens uses to supply restaurants and grocery stores in Toronto with several varieties of basil, as well as dandelions and mustard greens. Aquaponics is a water-based growing method that requires no soil: instead, the plant roots are bathed in highly oxygenated water that draws its nutrients from the waste generated by the fish living in tanks in another part of the system.

As the water is pumped from the fish tanks to the tanks that feed the plants, the ammonia in it is converted to nitrate fertilizer. In turn, as the plants draw on the water, they filter and clean it before it is returned to the fish, in what is called a re-circulating, closed loop ecosystem. A full 90 per cent of the water is recycled.

Aquaponics can significantly reduce the ecological footprint of growing food. Aqua Greens’s indoor aquaponic system conserves land, reduces the distance food travels and uses no pesticides, herbicides or added fertilizers.

Where does Humber come into this? The founders of Aqua Greens, Pablo Alvarez and Craig Petten, are graduates of Humber. Both were working as waiters when they decided they wanted to do something more with their lives. Both enrolled in Humber’s Sustainable Energy and Building Technology program. They did their final project together, on aquaponics — seeing an opportunity to combine their passion for sustainability with their love of good food.

But the company has another tie to Humber: Aqua Greens received funding from the Humber New Ventures Seed Fund and later won the Humber Launch Pad Entrepreneur Award, which led to more than $30,000 in funding as well as giving access to mentors, business plans and business coaches.

Partner(s): Aquagreens
Funded by: Humber College

About Humber Polytechnic

Humber Polytechnic is one of Canada’s leading postsecondary institutions, combining deep theoretical learning with applied, hands-on experience. Humber offers a wide variety of credentials including... Learn more
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Parisian Pastries from Prairie Pulses

The rich food value of dried peas, beans, lentils and chickpeas has been known for centuries — their collective name, “pulses”, comes from puls, a Latin word that means both “seeds” and “porridge”. Pulses are widely consumed both as animal feed and in savoury dishes for humans around the world, and research continues to expand their uses.

Some of those new uses are remarkable — the crowning achievement of this project was to create a nut-free, egg-free French macaron using navy bean flour as a butter substitute.

Best Cooking Pulses is a family-owned Canadian processor of pulse crops grown in Manitoba. Established in 1936, it keeps a close eye on developments in new ways to use pulses. Thanks to funding from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Best Cooking Pulses partnered with Red River College’s culinary research program to investigate the possibility of using pulse flour in baking to replace eggs.

One student, Alyssa Houston, was brought in to work on the project as part of her culinary work experience placement — the first time a culinary student has gained work experience through research rather than in food service. She even had the chance to demonstrate the research in public, at table-top discussions with industry. After the project, she went on to a job in food manufacturing, helping the company with production as well as recipe creation using the skill from this project.

Best Cooking Pulses is using research from this project to showcase the advantages and versatility of navy bean flour at conferences (such as the Research Chef Association), and to prepare papers demonstrating this new application for bean flour to clients and potential clients.

Industry: Agriculture | Food
Funded by: Engage Grant, NSERC

About Red River College Polytechnic

Red River College (RRC) is Manitoba’s largest institute of applied learning. The institution is renowned for providing accessible, innovative, applied learning and research in an... Learn more
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Art, Science and Traditional Knowledge

Finding Understanding of the Thawing Northern Landscape

In Canada’s north, climate change is not just manifested in more storms and hotter summers. As the world warms up and permafrost melts, the landscape itself is transforming. Life for northerners is transforming with it, as they experience climate change through shifts in everything they do and have always understood.

Scientists’ understanding of climate change, on the other hand, is couched in hard data, things that are physically quantifiable: temperature increases, greenhouse gases, water vapour loss.

The challenge for Graham Strickert, adjunct faculty at Yukon College and research fellow at the University of Saskatchewan’s Global Institute for Water Security, is to bring together those two types of knowledge in what he calls human dimensions research, looking for ideas that will help northerners to adapt to the changes confronting them.

“The idea is there’s lots of biophysical research out there on climate change and its impacts and it usually gets put into a report that’s useful for the science community and sometimes for policy but it’s not particularly useful for First Nations or isolated communities,” said Strickert.

To bridge that gap, Strickert and his team, funded by one of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Community and College Social Innovation Fund grants, will capture knowledge from both sides in a third way of understanding — which, in this project, will be through art. (In an earlier project on water security in the Saskatchewan River basin, Stickert and his colleagues presented their research findings as a play).

The art will be created by students at Yukon School of Visual Art in response to what they hear and learn from spending time with residents of two communities, Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in Old Crow, Yukon, and the Jean Marie River First Nation in the Northwest Territories. The art — likely involving maps and audio and visual recordings of the residents and their land — becomes what are called “boundary objects.”

The objects will capture changes such as wetlands that have turned to lakes as the thawing permafrost releases ancient water, and the collapse of the caribou population as the ground they once ran over and fed off turns to wetlands.

“Boundary objects allow people who have very different ways of knowing the world and different backgrounds — science and traditional knowledge — to bridge boundaries,” Stickert explained. “You don’t have to define the object in the same way or even think in the same way.” Essentially, the artistic language created by the students becomes the common language.

The students and scientists will meet for a three-day workshop for training before heading to the communities. While working with the residents, the team will embed the art in social science tools, such as getting people to sort pictures in the order they matter to them, so the researchers can see how much community members agree on issues and priorities to provide pathways for community adaptation to climate change

Funded by: College and Community Innovation Program

About Yukon University

Yukon University is the only publicly funded post-secondary education institution in Yukon, a territory of 36,000 inhabitants spread out over 482,000 square kilometers. The University... Learn more
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Looking for a Way to Nurture Systems to Feeds Us

Agricultural land is an irreplaceable natural resource and we are not looking after it as we should, according to Kent Mullinix, director of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

“Nations and provinces and municipalities create policy and law and regulation all the time to advance their vision, their agenda, and somehow we have decided a sustainable food system isn’t worth doing that for,” Mullinix said in a telephone interview.

Mullinix is the lead researcher on Fostering Regional Food Systems, a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, from its Community and College Social Innovation Fund.

He and his colleagues are studying the importance, potential and challenges of implementing sustainable regional food systems—which he defines as “all the elements that collectively contribute to production, distribution, purchasing and consumption of food and handling the waste associated with it.” Regional food systems build local economies, rather than shipping money and jobs elsewhere.

There are good reasons to move back from our globalized food system, Mullinix said, including that climate change, transportation costs and other factors are making it unsustainable and unaffordable, while foreign agricultural practices may be unsafe.

The problem is that planners have ignored food systems despite their essential role in keeping us all alive. Agricultural land is under pressure from development — nowhere more than in Richmond, B.C., where Mullinix works, next door to the hottest real-estate market in the country. B.C. does have an “Agricultural Land Reserve,” protected for agriculture. But it fails to encourage regional food systems in several ways, Mullinix said.

Preserved land does not have to be farmed. B.C.’s land reserve policy does nothing to prevent speculation, putting prices well out of reach for people who might actually want to farm. (Wealthy landowners renting to farmers is known as feudalism, Mullinix pointed out, and probably not a model we want in this country).

Earlier research by the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems suggests about one-third of the unfarmed land in the agricultural reserve in Surrey could be productive, and — with small-scale single farmers doing community-focused, intensive farming — could create 1,200 jobs, satisfy Surrey’s needs for 27 crops and animal products six months of the year, while generating $77 million in net income.

The researchers will assess land value and ownership trends since 1977 and try to determine the extent regional food systems can supply local food needs, create jobs, and contribute to environmental stewardship. They will also create the world’s first web-based, open-access regional food system research and information hub.

“I am an agricultural scientist,” Mullinix said. “I have witnessed the industrialization of agriculture and what it has done to farmers, to food, to the economy, to communities and the environment. I have witnessed it, and I know there is a better way to do food systems.”

Funded by: Community and College Social Innovation Fund

About Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Established by the government of British Columbia in 1981, Kwantlen, now Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has four campuses located in the Metro Vancouver region of British... Learn more