Protein Industries Canada is now looking for new projects

Mar 03, 2023

PIC CEO Bill Gruel says they are now accepting Expressions of Interest for new projects.

He says there are four key areas of focus from genetics development to crop development, ingredients and products.

"We're really looking for projects in what we would call the ingredient and food space. So, ingredient manufacturers that are looking to develop new and novel technologies, or improve the efficiency of existing technologies and working with food companies or industrial feed companies or bioproducts as well."

Gruel notes they are looking for collaborative projects that have an increased emphasis on ingredient processing.

"So they must work with at least two other organizations or companies, one of them must be a small or medium-sized enterprise. The project is really around innovation. We don't fund capital support for the infrastructure of a processing facility, but we will support innovation to make those facilities more efficient or the development of new products."

Protein Industries Canada is looking for ingredient manufacturers that are looking to develop new and novel technologies or improve the efficiency of existing technologies, working with food companies, industrial feed companies or bioproducts as well.

Projects must include the use of a high-protein dryland crop such as lentils, peas, chickpeas, canola, fava, oat, flax, lupin or soy.

Potential applicants will have an opportunity to talk with the team at PIC, prior to applying, who will walk them through everything from start to finish about the project application process and criteria.

Gruel says PIC can also help companies find partners to work with if they don't have a partner already.

Expressions of Interest are now open for the newest round of funding through Protein Industries Canada and will close on April 19, 2023.

Source : Pembinavalley online

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.