In recent years, plant-based food products, such as plant-based beverages, ice-cream, and yogurt, have been much admired by health and environment conscious consumers due to their sustainability and health benefits. This industrial collaborative project aims to optimize grinding processing to treat plant proteins of different sources to achieve sufficient particle size reduction, while avoiding the […]

Western honey bees are economically important insects that provide essential pollination services to agriculture. It is generally acknowledged that Varroa destructor mites, since making their way from Asia to the rest of the world, have become the most serious threat to the stability of the apiculture industry. To control V. destructor, apiculturists apply miticides, but […]

Honeybees are considered the world’s most devoted pollinators as they provide an essential ecosystem service that is vital to the maintenance of both wild plant communities and agricultural productivity. In Canada alone, the honeybee industry is worth over 4 billion dollars annually. Over the last years, beekeepers have been faced with major colony loss due […]

Toxoplasma gondii is a pathogen of cats that can infect a wide variety of species including humans and sheep. Although there is only one species of T. gondii, there are many strains of the parasite with varying degrees of severity resulting in different disease outcome. When a human or animal is infected, the host may […]

The innovation of plant cell and tissue culture (TC) techniques has supported plant propagation programs and allowed for the development of new ornamental varieties. Van Belle Nursery is interested in adapting TC as a method of cultivation but lack the technical expertise and understanding of infrastructure requirements to establish an on-site TC program. Specifically, they […]

Canola is a highly bee-attractive crop which is widely grown in Saskatchewan and commonly treated with agrochemicals, including neonictoinoid insecticides. The impact of canola production on native pollinator populations in Saskatchewan is unknown. In this Mitacs project, Sofiia will compare the abundance and diversity of wild pollinators in canola and non-canola habitats in Saskatchewan and […]

Lighthouse Coffee Roasters is a company that focuses on supporting the small town farmers in the rural Myanmar, by importing coffee cherries every year from the harvest, and selling it post roasting in the local Canadian market. Currently, they have built a loyal customer base that has a sustainable return ratio, but want to have […]

À l’ère des changements climatiques, les entreprises d’élevage font face à des défis importants. Afin d’aider ces entreprises à accroître leur résilience et adopter des pratiques agricole écoresponsable, il est essentiel de revoir les modèles agricoles. Le développement d’un sylvopastoral combinant l’implantation de haies agroforestières à une régie de paissance en rotation pourrait favoriser la […]

Agricultural expansion in northern boreal regions presents an opportunity to generate food security and self-sufficiency in the face of climate change. However, little is known about how conversion of boreal forest to agriculture affects soil arthropod communities, despite their essential role in sustaining crop productivity among many other soil functions essential to human well-being. This […]

Conventional agriculture needs large inputs of nutrients, through the addition of fertiliser, in order to produce the amount of food needed globally to sustain the population. Typical fertilisers are hugely wasteful, polluting the atmosphere and waterways, and affecting human health, wildlife, and ecosystem stability. Nanomaterials are very small particles that have potential to be used […]

Insects, being dominant in almost all ecosystems, are vitally important for regulating ecosystem health. There are growing concerns that insect abundance is declining globally, causing serious consequences for ecosystem services. To understand insect abundance trends, and their drivers, we need long-term monitoring schemes that are sensitive enough to detect change over time whilst balancing against […]

Xanthomonas phaseo i pv. manihotis (Xpm) is an important bacteria pathogen causing Cassava Bacteria Bight (CBB). Cassava is an important staple food source for millions of people worldwide. However, CBB constrains crop productivity and threatens food security for people in tropical regions. Xpm uses a set of effector proteins to manipulate Cassava defenses. Our research […]