Stéphane DuPont admits that Saskatoon is a strange place to announce a network that will develop biological controls for greenhouses and tree nurseries.
“The Prairies are not the Canadian pole for greenhouse activities,” said the manager of the Biocontrol Network.
But it is the centre of agriculture biotechnology and biotech companies are key to the project’s success.
Biocontrol Network is a research association aimed at reducing the use of pesticides in agriculture and forestry by replacing them with biocontrols like predatory insects, invertebrates, bacteria, fungi and viruses.
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The network comprises 42 scientists from 15 universities and seven government research agencies, and will be headquartered at the Université de Montréal. Funding comes from a $6.6 million, five-year federal government grant.
“This is what everybody who knows anything about biocontrol has told us over the years – we need this,” DuPont said.
“We’ll never get to seriously compete with chemical pesticides unless we get established as some sort of network.”
He said the network gives biocontrol researchers the means to get their products to market.
“Just doing it year-in, year-out with regular funding in your own lab, it just doesn’t get there, it never gets there.”
Ag-West Biotech Inc. president Peter McCann attended the news conference launching the network. His company was a strong supporter of the defunct BioProducts Centre, a precursor to the Biocontrol Network.
“I’m very happy to see that this is moving now to the national level and getting some significant funding.”
He said pest control is moving toward an integrated pest management system that will incorporate treatments based on the natural enemies of insect pests and disease pathogens.
“International chemical companies are wise enough to understand that their future is bound up in this.”
Researchers will focus first on biocontrols for pests and diseases that affect greenhouses and tree nurseries because they are “contained ecosystems” that are easier to manage.
Those pests and diseases also tend to be prevalent across the country, so biocontrols for them will be in wide use, which is important for a nationally funded project.
DuPont said lessons learned “under glass and plastic” in the next five years will help protect open field crops and forests.
Developing products that chemical and biotechnology companies are interested in taking to market will be the key to securing funding that will broaden the research’s scope, he said.
Product acceptance by Saskatoon-based companies like Philom Bios Inc. and MicroBio RhizoGen Corp. is crucial.
“A lot of our products will end up in their hands as opposed to the big chemical companies,” DuPont said.”There is great potential for smaller companies to carve out niches that the big companies just won’t touch with a 10-foot pole.”
