New Report From Vineland Highlights Horticulture Innovation in Action
December 16, 2023 
Ashley Summerfield and Rose Buitenhuis of Vineland; Photo by Kevin Patrick Robbins.
For more than 117 years, the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre has supported the Canadian horticulture industry (and by extension, growers in the U.S.) and government stakeholders in creating innovation opportunities. As a result, Vineland has grown to become Canada’s most successful research and technology organization (RTO) dedicated to horticultural innovation by actively assisting and engaging stakeholders with focused and effective outcome-based research, development, and commercialization support.
Each year, Vineland releases an Innovation Report that highlights some of its major research projects and program. This year’s report includes a few specific to horticulture.
Expanding the Reach of Bred-in-Canada Roses
When British Columbia-based plant brand Bloomin’ Easy wanted to add new rose varieties to its well-known collection of plants for young homeowners, they knew Vineland would have what they were looking for. That’s because Vineland’s cold-tolerant, low-maintenance, disease resistant roses based on germplasm acquired from the former Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada breeding program had become well-known across the country.
“This is perfectly aligned with our approach when we are searching for products to add to Bloomin’ Easy — low maintenance plants for people who don’t know much about gardening,” says Bloomin’ Easy Founder DeVonne Friesen. “We know that roses are one category of plant that everybody is familiar with and that homeowners seek them out but roses are also scary to people; they have a reputation for being hard to grow and maintain.”
Searching for Solutions Against Thrips Species Affecting Ontario Greenhouse Crops
Greenhouse growers are constantly looking for new ways to fight pests that affect their crops. And thanks to the work of scientists, they’ll be better equipped due to a recent discovery of an unknown and highly detrimental species.
Thrips is a pest that affects a wide range of ornamental crops where it causes damage, making the plants unsaleable. It had long been believed that western flower thrips in particular was the culprit, but it was Sarah Jandricic, PhD, Floriculture Integrated Pest Management Specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) who first demonstrated a second species in the mix: onion thrips.
“We didn’t know where it (onion thrips) was coming from — we suspected outside — and it stayed over the winter, causing quite a bit of damage. Regular biocontrols we had developed against western flower thrips also didn’t control as well,” explains Rose Buitenhuis, PhD, Director, Biological Crop Protection at Vineland. “So, growers still needed to spray, which solved the onion thrips problem but didn’t work for the resistant western flower thrips.”
This led to a collaborative research project between Buitenhuis, Jandricic and University of Guelph professor Cynthia Scott-Dupree, PhD to find a biological control for both species that could work in greenhouse environments.
New Focus on Validating and De-risking Horticultural Technology for Growers
Labor-saving technologies and practices have long been a key focus for fruit and vegetable growers. Horticulture is a sector with many delicate, fragile crops that require a lot of hand labor to grow, manage, and harvest but growers are also increasingly challenged with both a shortage of workers and rising labor costs.
In 2018, Vineland began to lead the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Canadian Agricultural Partnership Five-year Automation Cluster enabling the development of new technology solutions for the horticultural industry. A summary evaluation process conducted by Vineland was completed when the program ended in March 2023, which highlighted some interesting lessons learned, notes Darby McGrath, Vineland’s Vice President, Research and Development.
“During this time, the ecosystem had matured considerably. Five years ago, the big push was on technology development and putting North America on the map in terms of horticultural technology and automation,” she explains. “Now the focus is on how we ensure the technologies aimed at growers are the right ones and how do we optimize, validate and de-risk those technologies for growers?”
You can find the complete report here.
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