One Day, Plants Could Grow Your Meds, Say U of G Researchers

May 24, 2024

“Is this insulin animal-free?”

In a future where major medications – like insulin, cancer treatments and life-saving vaccines – are grown from plants, such a question is valid.

Though the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has said, “There is no commercial plant molecular farming in Canada to date, and none is anticipated in the near future,” University of Guelph researchers disagree

As Dr. Jennifer Geddes-McAlister, professor in the College of Biological Science puts it, there is no reason plants should not be making our drugs right now:

“In theory, it should already be happening,” she says. “Because the promise is there. The setup and infrastructure are there. The research is there. The biggest hurdle is reducing variability in drug production.”

These are the current aims of molecular pharming, the field that uses plants, rather than costly animal cells and materials, to produce our pharmaceuticals.

Click here to see more...

Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

You will see how sunflower seeds are processed into cooking oil, roasted snacks, bakery ingredients, birdseed, livestock feed, and useful byproducts. From golden fields to modern processing plants, this is the story of how a beautiful flower becomes one of America’s important oilseed crops.

Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.