14 mai 2024
$1 million to extend the growing season of berries
A team from the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences has qualified for the 2nd phase of the Weston Family Foundation's Homegrown Innovation Challenge.
Professors Steeve Pépin and Martine Dorais working on their proof of concept for the Homegrown Innovation Challenge.
— Weston Family Foundation
Professor Martine Dorais, a greenhouse and controlled environment agriculture specialist at Université Laval’s Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Weston Family Foundation as part of the Homegrown Innovation Challenge. Professor Dorais and her colleagues are among a select group of 11 teams that have qualified for the second phase of this Canada-wide competition which aims to promote the development and implementation of innovative ideas to extend the growing season of berries.
Professor Dorais has teamed up with Granby-based industry partner CycloFields Indoor Farming Technology to pioneer a vertical aeroponic production system for year-round strawberry harvest. The project dubbed “VertBerry” will adapt the company’s technology, initially used for lettuce growing, to strawberry cultivation by suspending plants on rotating vertical carousels that slide along overhead rails while sprinklers mist their dangling roots with water at regular intervals.
"We are also developing an aeroponic propagation method for plants that will enable us to offer healthy, high-quality transplants, explains Martine Dorais, who holds the MAPAQ Research Chair in Organic Horticulture in Greenhouses and Controlled Environments. This will minimize the risk of disease or pest dissemination often observed in transplants brought in from outside."
The system will greatly increase yields and reduce the carbon footprint by 90% compared with conventional greenhouses. It will recover energy and water, eliminate the need for pesticides and prevent nutrient leaching and CO2 losses. Adjustable LED lighting will enable the daily management of a microclimate specially tailored to strawberry cultivation.
Martine Dorais and her colleagues have until November to build and test their proof of concept. An evaluation committee will then choose 4 teams from the 11 currently in the running to move on to the final stage of the Challenge, in which the selected teams will have 3 years – and up to $5 million in additional funding – to scale up their projects to industry standards.
For further details on the project, click here.
Source:
Communications Department
Université Laval
418-656-3355
