Applied Research Type: Food

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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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A big problem for Little Harbour

In picturesque Little Harbour, Nova Scotia, the livelihoods and pastimes of residents are inextricably linked to the water. More than 650 permanent and seasonal homes, along with six commercial shellfish harvesting areas, lie along Little Harbour’s 31.5 kilometres of shoreline.

But the beauty and prosperity of the area is being undermined by water contamination levels in the harbor, which have been on the rise for some years. The main contaminant is fecal coliform—the bacteria found in feces, and one that can accumulate in shellfish tissue. The presence of fecal coliform and the disease-causing pathogens it can contain has had an impact on both recreational and aquaculture sites around Little Harbour — two of Little Harbour’s six shellfish-growing areas are under restrictions that require costly additional steps to ensure the product is safe for consumption.

It’s believed two factors are to blame for the degradation of Little Harbour’s water — more houses that rely on residential septic fields are being built in the area, and precipitation patterns that are changing. The combination has increased the number of land-based contaminants being flushed into the water.

In August of 2016, Nova Scotia Community College’s Applied Geomatics Research Group partnered with AquaDelights Seafood Inc. and the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia to investigate the sources and circulation patterns of the bacterial contamination.

They began by modelling water circulation patterns; results showed that many bacteria particles released into Little Harbour were transported only a few meters from their points of origin. They also discovered the changing tide left low concentrations of contaminates settling along the shorelines and increasing the mean fecal coliform count.

The work included a spatial and statistical analysis of 25 years of water quality data and gathered integrated underwater mapping data and aerial photographs of Little Harbour.

Once the work was completed, the information was shared with the community to influence future actions and encourage remediation of sources of contamination. Most Little Harbour residents were aware of the environmental impact of septic runoff in general, but many believed the tide cycle carried contaminants out to sea, and only learned that was not true from this project. As a result, this research stimulated interest in remediating sources of contamination, and increased local understanding that deteriorating water quality is a hindrance to both environmental and economic health.

Since the conclusion of NSCC’s research in November 2016, the community of Little Harbour has formed the Community Watershed Management Group to spearhead necessary changes and improve water quality in the area.

“The Little Harbour water monitoring project is an important first step in understanding and communicating the need to work with coastal communities to provide the research that will pave the way forward for a brighter future,” said Tom Smith, executive director of the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia.

Funded by: College and Community Innovation Program, Engage Grant, NSERC

About Nova Scotia Community College

Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) is committed to building Nova Scotia’s economy and quality of life through education and innovation, transforming Nova Scotia one learner... 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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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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Students add flare to a foodie favorite

Longshore Fisheries is a family-owned lobster fishery that employs most of the residents in Sonora, Nova Scotia — but it is just one of over 400 seafood processing companies in the Maritimes. The company experienced steady and gradual growth and over time expanded its building and added equipment, new products and services.

“The lobster industry is very competitive,” says Krysta Hanley, whose family set up the company in a shuttered clam plant. “We realized very quickly we need to have something that nobody else has.” The family-owned business realized it needed help to be innovative, so they approached the New Brunswick Community College’s applied research and innovation office looking for technical advice on how they could improve their product line.

Longshore Fisheries’ challenge first became an applied research assignment for culinary arts students doing an advanced food production course. As a lobster fishery, the company had plenty of lobster by-product and they believed that, with some innovative help, it could create value for the company. The culinary arts students investigated and tested value-added recipes to create new products for Longshore Fisheries using the lobster by-product. Then it was up to marketing students in business administration to develop marketing plans to set Longshore Fisheries’ new products apart.

The culinary arts students created eleven new products for Longshore Fisheries. The marketing students then developed and presented marketing plans based on the new value-added food products created by the culinary arts students. Now, the company has tangible new products they can bring to the marketplace and plans for how to do it, while the NBCC students have grown their skill sets through practical and applied learning with industry.

Funded by: National Research Council - Industrial Research Assistant Program

About New Brunswick Community College

With over 90 regular programs and six campuses across New Brunswick, New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) is a collaborative, learner-centred college – creatively contributing to... Learn more
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Integrating kosher and food-safety guidelines

While there is much overlap between kosher and food safety programs, they have been kept markedly separate. Until now — thanks to the Kashruth Council of Canada and Niagara College’s joint project to develop an efficient way to integrate kosher certification with food safety planning.

The council, a not-for-profit organization, is Canada’s largest certifier of kosher food. Its inspectors are responsible for determining that products made at more than 1,000 facilities across Canada and around the world meet the standards of Jewish dietary laws.

At the same time, most of the world’s leading food retailers and manufacturers participate in the Global Food Safety Initiative, which was created to set international standards for food safety. Ensuring compliance with the initiative’s standards is overseen by the British Retail Consortium and the Safe Quality Food Program, among others.

The Kashruth Council believed integrating kosher standards with the safety requirements already in the guideline documents of those two organizations would simplify business for thousands of companies that want to meet both food safety and kosher standards. (More than 40 per cent of packaged food products sold in the United States are kosher certified, according to market research firm Mintel).

One faculty member and several students from Niagara College’s Canadian Food and Wine Institute Innovation Centre worked for six months with the Council to lay out exactly where kosher certification requirements should be included in the safety documents so companies would only have to check one source to review safety and kosher requirements.

In most cases, adding a few words to a safety standard was all that was required. This safety requirement from the British Retail Consortium: “The site shall have a demonstrable meeting program which enables food safety, legality and quality issues to be brought to the attention of senior management at least monthly and allows for the resolution of issues requiring immediate action,” only needed the word “kosher” added before “quality” and “kosher certifier” added after “senior management,” to combine the two standards.

Amended guides for both the British Retail Consortium and the Safe Quality Food Program have already been published. “We are always looking for ways to make kosher certification more efficient and effective for our kosher certified companies, and we are hopeful that this project will do just that,” says Rabbi Sholom H. Adler, the Kasruth council’s director of Industrial Kosher.

Industry: Food

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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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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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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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
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Returning to Traditional Knowledge for Solutions to Modern Problems

In Northern Québec, just inland from James Bay, stands the Cree Nation of Chisasibi, a new home for an ancient people.

The history that brought a nomadic nation to this small village caused disruption in every aspect of life, culture and knowledge. Now, the Chisasibi nation is working with researchers, led by the Cégep de Victoriaville, to establish new approaches to food security based on traditional knowledge. The project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, out of its Community and College Social Innovation Fund.

There are about 4,000 Chisasibi Cree. For them, as for other northern communities, food insecurity is a major issue. As well, Québec’s Institut de la santé publique has reported that 80 per cent of Cree are obese or overweight — highlighting another serious issue with Chisasibi’s food supply.

Richard Lair, a teacher at Cégep de Victoriaville and a researcher with its Centre for Social Innovation in Agriculture, is the project director. He said in an interview that Chisasibi’s problems with food must be seen in the context of what shaped them — colonialization, reduced subsidies for food, the loss of native culture and residential schools causing a gradual loss of traditions around food.

At the same time, hunting and fishing are getting more expensive and more difficult to do because of forestry and the hydro development, Lair said.

“The effect of many factors over the years has been a decrease in the share of total food intake accounted for by traditional sources in the Cree population,” he explained. “Traditional foods were replaced with more fast and frozen foods with higher fat, salt and sugar content, which the Cree were unaware were not healthy.” The result was unhealthy eating habits and widespread negative consequences for health.

Solutions to food supply issues can be found, Lair said, provided the correct approach is taken to reveal them. It must be a multi-faceted, holistic approach that takes into account the history, culture and political factors that have shaped Chisasibi’s reality.

It’s equally important the researchers understand it is not a question of them returning lost knowledge of traditional food to the community. Their job is to assist the community to find its own answers. The project will be done as “participatory action research,” a collaborative approach that recognizes community members as co-researchers and draws on local experience and social history to shape its work and findings.

The first phase of the project is to understand the current food situation, including the role of traditional food supply in it, capturing Cree food traditions that are still alive in the community. The second phase seeks to help the Cree to capture their traditional food knowledge, then preserve it in a database. Finally, in the third phase, that knowledge will be used to identify projects for resolving food issues and developing pilot projects to test them.

Ultimately, the researchers hope to share knowledge from this project with all ten Cree nation communities of northern Québec, and build a website with easy access to information about traditional food sources, healthy eating practices and more.

About Cégep de Victoriaville

Le Cégep de Victoriaville c’est près de 1 600 étudiantes et étudiants à l’enseignement régulier, 375 à la formation continue et plus de 400 employés... Learn more