Peak Potential: Scaling the Mountain of Waste with Sustainable Solutions

Nov 28, 2023

By Tabitha Caswell for Bioenterprise

With a mountain of issues to climb, it can be difficult to remain positive when imagining the future of humanity and our home here on earth. But thanks to leaders like Franco Berruti, we are scaling that mountain, tackling challenges like climate change and a hungry, growing population through research and innovation. Equal parts realist and dreamer, Dr. Berruti acknowledges the stark reality of where our planet might be headed. But with a steadfast love for nature and the environment, he keeps the summit in his sights and refuses to give up.

Holding the Industrial Research Chair in Thermochemical Conversion of Biomass and Waste to Bioindustrial Resources with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) since 2018, Franco Berruti shares his perspectives surrounding one of the most important topics of our time – waste.

From Death, Comes Life

Dr. Berruti’s story begins in the fertile Italian countryside, tending the family gardens and vineyards, sharing space with animals and riding horses, and learning to drive the tractor at the tender age of ten years old. It was there, on his grandparents’ farm, where Franco first witnessed the delicate balance of nature.

Country life has a way of profoundly affecting humans, revealing the truth and beauty within the infinite cycle of life and death, and this impressionable young boy was not immune to nature’s great influence. There, on the farm, waste was a treasure, a tool, a resource. It was returned to the earth, to the soil, back to the plants and animals, and back to the people. Young Franco may not have realized the significance of this concept then, but his childhood experience undoubtedly shaped his future and his purpose.

Despite his early academic interest in humanities, after high school Franco changed his focus from Greek, Latin, and the arts, to earn his Dott.Ing degree in Chemical Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy. At the age of 25 he moved to Canada to study at the University of Waterloo, where he earned his Master of Applied Science degree and then his PhD.

Evolving though various leadership roles, from the University of Calgary to the University of Saskatchewan where he served as Dean of Engineering, and finally landing at the University of Western Ontario, Dr. Berruti is also a valued member of the Science and Innovation Advisory Committee (SIAC) at Bioenterprise.

Dr. Berruti has a legendary reputation for developing innovative technologies and for building a solid network in Canada and North America, and across the world. His award-winning work covers the full spectrum of the waste-value loop. In terms of sustainability, we could draw a definite line between the oil and gas industry and the biomass conversion industry, which seem to reside on opposite ends of the spectrum. But Franco chooses to straddle that line, as to keep a steady foothold while reaching for the ledge above.

Adjusting to maintain this position after each move, he draws on lessons from his past as he makes incremental, meaningful advances toward the final ascent. His purpose and vision are embodied in this simple statement, “In my mind, as in nature, waste does not exist.”

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”