The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) has awarded 101 McGill research projects funding from its Discovery Grants competition for a total investment of $23.5 million, including $639,500 for eight projects submitted by researchers in the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The Discovery Grants support ongoing programs with long-term goals, recognizing the creativity and innovation that are at the heart of all research advances.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing industries across Canada and the world, and agriculture is no exception. Post-secondary institutions and innovative farms are rapidly working to apply AI to food system challenges from labour shortages to climate change.
"McGill made me more comfortable with being myself and it gave me more confidence in both social and academic settings."
“Kind, approachable, compassionate, patient, respectful, enthusiastic.” These are just a few of the words used by students describing McGill University Bioresource Engineering Associate Professor Grant Clark, recipient of the 2024 Macdonald Campus Award for Teaching Excellence, awarded at the June 5 convocation ceremony.
Originally published in the McGill Reporter by Charlotte Bawol, Digital Communications & Event Administrator (Research and Innovation)
In an age of abundance and variety in food options, are Canadians eating better than they were half a century ago? According to a recent paper by researchers at McGill University and the International Food Policy Research Institute, those relying on Canada’s food supply for their dietary needs not only face deficiencies in healthier alternatives, but they also contribute to the disproportionate levels of environmental degradation caused by Canadian agricultural and food distribution policies.
Generations of Bioresource Engineering students have participated in the BREE 495 capstone design course. What innovative ideas did this year’s students come up with?
No one can say for sure whether Canada’s 2024 wildfire season will be as devastating as last year, when 15 million hectares of forest burned and over 230,000 people had to be evacuated from their communities, but the relative lack of snow this winter, drought conditions in several regions and an early start to fire season have officials on high alert.
In the University-wide 3MT/MT180 competition, graduate students have the chance to showcase their leading-edge research before a live audience. With only three minutes and a single slide, students must engage their audience and convey the complexities of their work to a diverse, non-expert audience. Participants may present their research in English or in French and winners will advance to regional and national competitions.
According to the Shanghai Global Ranking 2023, McGill now ranks number one among Canadian universities by the “Food Science & Technology” academic subject. This trend is remarkable, as McGill University has consistently risen in the global ranking year after year.
Food Science & Technology is also one the best ranked subjects at McGill.
In the contemporary agricultural landscape, interest in vertical farming is surging. This alternative to conventional methods can allow farmer's to cultivate crops in compact spaces, maximizing output without expanding horizontally by instead cultivating crops in vertically stacked layers or inclined surfaces. Increasing land use efficiency is critical as the world grapples with limited arable land, especially in urban areas.
Guatemala is now the third-largest palm oil producer after Malaysia and Indonesia (which produce 88% of the global supply) and is often seen as a more sustainable alternative. Today, more than 60% of Guatemala’s plantations are certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). High certification rates are largely attributed to plantations owned by a handful of producers, making it easier to certify large chunks of the industry, according to RSPO.
AgCareers.com has awarded their second Canadian Feed Your Future Scholarship to Sarah Van Heyst, a McGill University student working towards her M.Sc. in Bioresource Engineering.
AgCareers.com created the Feed Your Future $1,000 Scholarship to financially assist a Canadian post-secondary student studying agriculture or intending to pursue a career in agriculture, in support of the organization's goal to "Feed the World with Talent" by supporting education and career opportunities in agriculture and food.
As the ash settles on Canada’s record wildfire season, “business as usual from the federal government is not going to cut it,” NDP MP Niki Ashton told Canada’s National Observer.
In the not-so-far-off future, artificial intelligence could help farmers analyze data to make decisions and improve their outputs.
“The bottleneck right now is that farmers have data but don’t necessarily know what it means. They often need a specialist to figure it out,” says Felippe Karp, a PhD candidate in McGill's Bioresource Engineering department and member of the Precision Agriculture and Sensor Systems (PASS) research team led by Professor Viacheslav Adamchuk.
