Horticulture will be central to an increased emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Guelph, says the institution’s new president.

Dr. Rene Van Acker, named the university’s 10th president in July 2025, says efforts are underway to build more opportunities and support for entrepreneurship, including through the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance. 

The alliance is a government-university collaboration for research and education that brings together the University of Guelph, Agricultural Research and Innovation Ontario and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness. The alliance provides a portion of the funding for the University of Guelph to manage a network of 15 publicly owned agricultural research stations, sites and investments across the province. 

Van Acker sees horticulture as the “vanguard’ of the alliance’s entrepreneurial emphasis. Ontario produces more than 200 commodities, many of which are marketed as raw products or exported and processed abroad. Horticulture, which sports a wide, diverse group of commodities, has long been identified as a sector with significant value-added potential.

And that’s Van Acker’s hope. He’s chuffed by initiatives at the university such as the Arrell Food Institute’s Global Food Prize and, closer to home, the Feeding the Future exercise, in which university officials engage with stakeholders to determine priorities. 

During the latest iteration of this program, involving more than 300 stakeholders, commercialization and market access was one of five key themes for action by the university and the agri-food sector. Participants said the university’s strong track record in commercialization must be expanded, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises in the agri‑food sector, including farms. Mentorship, funding and clearer pathways for taking innovations from the lab to the marketplace were among the activities cited for more support.

Van Acker is enthused about the potential for entrepreneurism centred around the research stations, driven by faculty and staff expertise, involving students in the research process and supported by the communities that are home to the stations. Product and technology creation resulting from entrepreneurism leads to new jobs, an asset to any community, particularly as Ontario and Canada adjust to the changing geopolitical landscape. 

In the alliance system, horticulture benefits broadly from advances brought forward throughout the system, including from the Ontario Crops Research Station in the Holland Marsh, the Ontario Crops Research Centre near Simcoe and the Superior Plant Upgrading and Propagation (SPUD) unit at New Liskeard.

For its part, the SPUD unit supports farmers and the wider agriculture and food industry by offering testing for plant diseases and providing a stock of healthy plants to commercial growers across the province. It produces 10 per cent of the minitubers needed for seed potato production in Ontario. And it’s the only source in Canada for garlic seed suited for the Ontario climate. Other commodities that benefit from research and development at the SPUD unit includestrawberries, sweet potatoes, haskap berries and hazelnuts. 

Last summer, the governments of Canada and Ontario announced they were committing $330,000 to SPUD, through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership for a variety of capital and equipment upgrades there. Projects included improvements to the irrigation, air filtration, heating and control systems, increases to sterilization capacity and improvements to the greenhouse coverings. 

The horticulture industry wants more. It’s pressing for further investment in SPUD to make it a state-of-the-art operation, as vital as its livestock research-station counterparts in southwestern Ontario, such as the 175,000-square-foot Ontario Dairy Research Centre at the Elora Research Station. 

Van Acker understands that clean seed and propagation are a horticulture industry priority, having worked closely with the sector in past roles such as chair of the university’s Department of Plant Agriculture, dean of the Ontario Agricultural College and vice-president of research, as well as interim president since last November.

He says further investment in clean seed and propagation facilities is under discussion.

“We know the industry needs this service and wants us to figure out how to make it happen,” he says. “Until that’s decided, we’ll continue to make sure the facility at New Liskeard serves the sector and meets regulations.”