Saskatoon will get a bigger piece of the Canadian agricultural bio-technology pie with $15 million in new funding served by the provincial and federal governments last week, biotech sources say.
“This is not just another research announcement. It has the potential to lever Saskatchewan up to a new plateau,” said Peter McCann, of AgWest Biotech, a provincially funded industry promoter.
Crop researcher Wilf Keller agreed.
“This is not an add-on so we can keep doing the same projects we’re already funded for,” said Keller. “This is innovative funding for new initiatives.”
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The money, from the Agri-food Innovation Fund, will be spent on research and development, biotech facilities, technology and worker training.
More than $3 million will be spent on a fermentation and cell culture pilot plant, which will do laboratory work on a fee for service basis at Innovation Place, Saskatoon’s high-tech research park.
About half a million dollars will be spent on training so the burgeoning biotech sector will be able to find skilled workers.
The majority of the money is being spent on wide-ranging research in everything from canola breeding to producing plant-based vaccines for animals. Researchers from the Plant Biotechnology Institute, the Veterinary Infectious Disease Organization, the Agriculture Canada research station, the Crop Development Centre and other parts of the research community will share $9.4 million.
Improvements for canola
The big winner is canola research. Out of 15 research projects, about half are directly tied to the crop. These include projects to improve meal, increase drought resistance and increase oil content.
Keller said he is glad to see the concentration on canola, a focus of the Plant Biotechnology Institute where he works and of the University of Saskatchewan, which hosts a large Agriculture Canada canola research team.
“Even now, in the 1990s, canola is still considered to be a major success story,” he said. “It came from being a very minor industrial oilseed to the main oilseed (in Canada).”
Keller said the money will build up the Plant Biotechnology Institute.
“It will allow us to hire and employ a number of guest researchers to provide some training and to undertake some pretty exciting research projects.”
He said the large amount of new funding can be understood when one considers that the entire budget of the PBI is only about $9 million per year.
McCann, who was on the committee determining fund distribution, said the fermentation plant is part of the next wave of biotech development.
“What I would like to see in Saskatchewan is the manufacturing of products,” he said. “That’s where the real wealth generation for Saskatchewan is.”
More the merrier
Innovation Place already has Canamino, a high-tech oat processor, and with the addition of the new plant McCann hopes a manufacturing sector can begin growing deeper roots.
McCann said farmers won’t immediately see the results of biotechnology, but research and development has always been the base of Saskatchewan’s farm economy, and that will continue.
“We didn’t get there by accident,” he said. “We got there by research and development. It takes a long time to get a plant to the field.”
Both federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale and provincial agriculture minister Eric Upshall praised the University of Saskatchewan research community and stated their determination to keep it a leading centre for agricultural biotechnology.
“Biotech in Saskatchewan is a world leader,” Goodale said.
