Feature photo: PhD student Tewodros Taddese Tiruneh holds the seeds that he helped coat
Researchers in the Department of Chemical Engineering are leveraging their diverse skills to boost food resilience in Ontario.
Dr. Nasser Mohieddin Abukhdeir and Dr. Christian Euler are collaborating with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness (OMAFA) and the University of Guelph, to develop an advanced monitoring system that can detect early indicators of plant stress and disease in greenhouse crops before visible symptoms appear.
That initiative — funded by the governments of Canada and Ontario through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a federal, provincial and territorial initiative — could yield an important predictive tool for greenhouse production.
A similar spirit of problem‑solving drives another collaborative project, this time with industry partner Corteva Agrisciences and the University of Guelph. The challenge is Eastern Ontario farmers have struggled with the shorter growing season and a narrow window for planting winter wheat — often before soybeans are harvested.
University of Guelph researchers are using drones to scatter wheat seeds onto standing soybeans and encountered a problem with this planting method, the seeds dried out before they could germinate. Dr. Tizazu Mekonnen was brought into the project to address this issue. His team coated the seeds with an environmentally friendly hydrogel that holds moisture to the seeds.