By Alice McFarlane

Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) invests in a unique biomanufacturing facility at USASK

Mar 5, 2021 | 1:52 PM

MELFORT, Sask. – A unique biomanufacturing facility at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) will use cutting-edge engineering biology technologies.

The Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS) will be the location of this new, high tech research centre.

GIFS executive director Steve Webb said the Engineering Biology Agri-food Innovation Centre has received $3.2 million from a federal government foundation.

“We’re using it to purchase equipment that will enable the engineering biology platform. Engineering biology is a critical enabler to the global bio economy which is expected to reach between $2 to $4 trillion in the next 10 to 20 years,” Webb said.

The money is for a portion of the capital required to build the platform which has an estimated cost of roughly $9.2 million. Webb said this is a one-of-a-kind project designed specifically for agriculture related projects.

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“There is something like this at Concordia University that’s focused largely on health applications,” he said. “We’ll be the first of its kind in ag and food in Canada.”

Webb said they have several areas of interest including developing canola varieties more resistant to climate change, flavourings for the plant-based meat industry, and non-animal enzyme alternatives for the dairy sector.

“In Western Canada is we’re really good at producing pulse crops that are exported and undergo further processing to become protein-based meat alternatives,” Webb said. “One of the key things that we see in the engineering biology platform is being able to support the development of new ingredients and flavours that would go into those pulse-based meat alternatives.”

Webb said he also sees the development of enzymes to help with processing. This ties into the Saskatchewan Growth Plan to add significant revenue from value added. He also wants to see improvements to crops, and biologics or microbial based systems.

Webb said this is extremely high tech, futuristic research.

“Yes, we’re talking about automation and machine learning. This is something that we need to recognize that this is a great investment. Countries like the U.S., UK, Japan, the European Union, and Singapore have all been investing in this,” he said.

Webb said farmers will benefit because the platform will accelerate the ability to discover, develop and deliver solutions.

“It’s really about us being able to harness the power of automation, miniaturization, computational power, and biology to create new and better tools and technologies. Things like herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, new plant varieties even faster and new seed treatments based on microbial treatments,” Webb said. “There’s so much we can give to farmers with this tool and technology.”

Webb said this represents the fourth industrial revolution.

“I am a nerd, and it is very cool to be able to be able to apply this technology platform and paradigm to driving science and new innovation for growth,” Webb said.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @farmnewsNOW