Vineland Research and Innovation Centre has published its 2022-2023 Innovation Report.  President and CEO Ian Potter says: “Vineland is carefully targeting areas where we and our stakeholders believe positive impacts and outcomes can result. These skills utilize Vineland’s core scientific and technical capabilities and also embrace a wider perspective of the future of Canadian horticulture.”

Here are key areas of focus:

1. Understanding how Canadian consumer demands will change over the next few decades.

2. The global economy, food security and supply are now and will become even stronger controlling factors.

3. The need for enhanced Canadian specific crop varieties to address changing growing seasons in widely variable environments and weather conditions.

4. Disease and pest pressures and the required responses as they are constantly evolving.

5. Supply chains require to be more robust and able to accommodate perturbations in the chain/system without failing.

6. The toolkit of skills and equipment being proposed in helping companies and the sector grow is forever increasing but existing horticultural practices and the introduction of new tools have to be carefully judged and validated to be fit for purpose.

7. Labour availability and additional skill requirements in all aspects of the sector will be a dominating business pressure.  

For the full report, link here: https://bit.ly/3XUYzFn

Source:  Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, Dec, 6, 2022.