New Frontiers research funds to improve plant proteins, to study environmental impacts of urban migration
Two land and food systems scientists have won New Frontiers in Research Fund Explorations awards, an award stream that focuses on fast-breaking, high-risk research that is international and interdisciplinary. These projects have been funded for two years, with the possibility of extension for a third year.
Plant proteins as an alternative to meat ($250,000)
Assistant Professor Derek Dee is a food scientist who has been studying how proteins behave under different conditions. With the burst of interest in plant proteins, he will research the behavior of soy, pea, lentil and peanut proteins to see how they can be developed to replace meat proteins. His goal is to create a texture from plant proteins that is satisfying and mimics the experience of eating meat.
His project combines biophysics and food science. Under certain conditions, protein molecules can self-assemble into nanofibrils (long, thin strands of 1000s of protein molecules), with different fibril types formed under different conditions. Plant proteins and nanofibrils are complex structures, and fundamental questions need to be answered to develop new plant protein ingredients. As people are seeking alternatives to animal protein to improve their health and the sustainability of their diet, plant proteins are being advanced to help meet this demand.
Environmental impacts due to rural-urban migration ($243,000)
Assistant Professor Frederik Noack applies economics to the study of land and food systems. He is leading a new project measuring the environmental impact of migration from rural to urban areas in developing countries. While more than 50 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, that number is expected to grow to 70 per cent by 2050.
Noack’s group will look at how biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions are impacted, while considering economic factors such as rising income levels, and incorporating population trends from sources that include satellite images and census data. His goal is to understand the environmental implications of people moving into urban areas with the hope that this could, in the future, inform policies to protect biodiversity, ecosystems, the climate and health.
Juli Carrillo (photo, right side) and Cara Haney are looking to some of Earth’s smallest organisms to help plants adapt to rising carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels. Carrillo and Haney have launched a two-year project funded by the George Weston Seeding Food Innovation Grant, investigating how beneficial soil microbes can help plants deal with the global rise in CO₂.
“CO₂ seems like it should be beneficial to plants since it is the building block of sugars generated in photosynthesis. More CO₂ means bigger plants,” says Haney, Assistant Professor with UBC’s Michael Smith Labs. “But research has shown that this increase in plant biomass corresponds to a decrease in plant quality and health.”
Rising CO₂ levels affect plants in a myriad of ways: decreasing their ability to take up micronutrients from the soil, increasing plant susceptibility to insects and diseases, and lowering overall nutrient content for people who consume these plants.
“Lower plant quality means insect pests need to eat more just to survive,” says Carrillo, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. “This is bad for crops, as is drought and other environmental stressors. What’s promising is that we’ve found that specific microbes in the soil can help plants respond to these stressors. Our goal is to determine if these microbes can also rescue the plants from the detrimental effects of elevated CO₂.”
Carrillo and Haney are working with the model plant, Arabidopsis, and its close crop relatives broccoli and canola. They are using a beneficial soil microbe, Pseudomonas fluorescens, to tease apart genetic traits that can help in addressing the effects of CO₂ on plant health.
“Our goal is adaptation,” Carrillo explains. “We are looking at factors across the food chain and across trophic levels above and below ground. This includes plants, insect pests and their natural enemies, and plant-soil associated microbes. I think that’s what makes our project unique. In this way we better understand the consequences of elevated CO₂ and potential ecological management options for crops.”
The researchers want their findings to be applicable for agriculture so they are working both in the lab and in the field to adapt microbes capable of surviving when cultivated in a farm setting.
“Many attempts to use microbes that show promise in the lab have not worked when you put them in the field,” says Haney. “We are trying to understand why certain microbes are beneficial, and by working directly with industry partners and farmers we hope to develop solutions that can have a viable impact in the industry.”
“We’re hoping that eventually, we can help offer these microbial solutions to farmers engaging in both organic and conventional farming,” adds Dr. Haney.
Mahsa Jessri is a new Assistant Professor in the Food, Nutrition and Health Program where she leads the Nutritional Epidemiology for Population Health research group. She works at the unique intersection of nutritional sciences, and population and public health.
Her goal is to help shape nutritional guidelines and policy decisions aimed at reducing the burden of chronic diseases by using evidence-based research and decision tools.
“One example of my decision tools is an individualized cardiovascular care algorithm we are currently working on, which draws on the data from thousands of Canadians previously treated to segregate those with the most to gain from changing dietary behaviours,” she said. “This tool would help dietitians and policy makers prioritize dietary interventions, similar to what has been done for decades in the medical field.”
Jessri brings to UBC expertise in nutritional and chronic disease epidemiology, dietary pattern modelling and health, dietary assessment, public and population health, machine learning, and preventive nutrition and dietetics.
“While policy makers recognize the importance of healthy diets in preventing chronic diseases, preventive efforts have had relatively little impact in terms of reduction in diet-related health outcomes,” she said. “What motivates me is trying to address some of these challenges, by providing policy makers with tools to better allocate and invest resources so they can benefit individual Canadians. My research draws from demographic, clinical, and behavioural data sources to inform decision-making related to improved health.”
Given the Faculty of Land and Food Systems’ incorporation of a wide range of disciplines and expertise, she plans to collaborate with other faculty members to develop approaches for tackling disparities in diet-related chronic diseases to ensure our food system is effective, yet equitable and sustainable.
Previously, Jessri worked at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, where she was a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Banting Fellow in the Clinical Epidemiology Program; at the University of Ottawa’s School of Epidemiology and Public Health; and at Statistics Canada in the Health Analysis Division. She received a Royal Society of Canada Award and Medal (2018) for her research leadership.
Derek Dee joined the Faculty of Land and Food Systems in January 2019 as an Assistant Professor in Food Science. His research focuses on understanding protein structure and function, and its potential applications in food, biomaterials and medicine.
Dee’s research is an unusual combination of food science and biophysics. His research involves a variety of biochemical, molecular biology and biophysical approaches and offers a training environment that blends basic and applied sciences to better understand and utilize food proteins and enzymes.
His potential collaborators are food scientists, physicists, and computer simulation specialists. One of his current projects is the genetic modification and engineering of protein nanofibrils. Protein nanofibrils are threads of protein only a few molecules wide yet a thousand times longer. They have unique properties which motivate research into how to mimic nature and create new functional materials.
“Owing to the complex three-dimensional structure of proteins, the design rules for building protein structures are not well-known,” he said. “My research would improve our understanding of how to assemble and functionalize protein nanofibrils with other molecules and integrate them into larger devices in a well-defined manner.”
Some examples of larger devices are biocatalytic reactors (ordered arrays of enzymes immobilized on a nanofibril network), biosensors (enzymes immobilized onto nanofibrils, in turn connected to a light or voltage sensor used to measure the concentration of the analyte of interest), nanowires or nanoelectronics.
His other project focus is plant protein nanofibrils for use in food. As people seek animal protein alternatives to improve their health and the sustainability of their diet, Dee believes legume proteins could meet this demand if novel processes are found that improve plant protein functionality in food. “Most studies have focused on fibrils made from animal proteins, while plant proteins are more complex and have received much less attention,” he said.
Prior to joining our Faculty, Dee was an Assistant Professor in Food Chemistry, Proteins and Enzymes at the University of Georgia, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Prion Protein Aggregation at the University of Alberta. He completed both his PhD in Biophysics and MSc in Food Science at the University of Guelph and is a recipient of the Alberta Innovates Health Solutions Postdoctoral Fellowship, Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Post Graduate Scholarship.
Save the date of Saturday, Sept. 14! Homecoming takes place at UBC Vancouver campus with several LFS events planned again this year. This is a chance to rekindle your collegiate spirit and meet up with fellow classmates.
LFS and Faculty of Medicine welcomed Michael Pollan to UBC
Rickey Yada, LFS Dean, and Evan Wood, Professor from the Faculty of Medicine, hosted influential journalist Michael Pollan at a sold-out UBC Connects event on Feb. 11.
Held at the Orpheum Theatre, Pollan’s talk titled Food, plants and psychedelics: Revolutionary approaches to human health and well-being, explored the intersection of humans and nature, with a deep dive into the world of psychedelics.
Alumni volunteers help Tri-Mentoring Program triple in size
Students and mentors celebrated their achievements and commitment to the LFS Tri-Mentoring Program on April 2 with an evening that included inspiring words from Dean Rickey Yada, an alumna-mentor, and a student speaker.
With 65 mentors and 130 students, this year’s total number of LFS participants almost tripled, making it the second largest Tri-Mentoring Program on campus! If you are interested in learning more about becoming a mentor, contact Niki Glenning, LFS Alumni Relations Manager, at 604-822-8910 or niki.glenning@ubc.ca.
Research cluster on sustainable food systems continues with Year 2 funding
Hannah Wittman, Professor in LFS and Academic Director of the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS) at UBC Farm, is co-leading an interdisciplinary research network that received a second year of support from UBC’s Catalyzing Research Excellence Clusters initiative. The Diversified Agroecosystems Research Cluster received $190,000 for 2019, and it brings together more than 40 researchers from across North America, each with a unique ecological, social, economic and systems analysis perspective.
Among its first-year activities, the cluster convened many internal workshops, as well as a network launch workshop, in which participants developed actionable plans on long-term monitoring, biodiversity, and sustainability of agroecosystems.
Multiple project proposals, grant applications and awards, and academic publications resulted from the ideas generated at the network launch workshop. Additionally, cluster member Zia Mehrabi, a Research Associate in the CSFS, the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES), and the Liu Institute for Global Studies, has recently released the first version of LiteFarm, a farm management application that assists farmers with day-to-day decision-making and enables them to track the sustainability of their farms. Wittman is also a Professor with IRES, which is a UBCbased interdisciplinary research institute and graduate program with expertise in a range of topics related to the environment and sustainability.
Barbara Stefanska named a senior editor for the British Journal of Pharmacology
Barbara Stefanska, Assistant Professor in Nutritional Epigenomics, has been appointed Senior Editor in Cancer Pharmacology for the British Journal of Pharmacology (BJP), a leading peer-reviewed international medical journal. BJP was established in 1946 and is published for the British Pharmacological Society. Twelve Senior Editors, including Stefanska, are active researchers from various countries who oversee submissions related to different areas of pharmacology.
Berry councils fund pest management research
Juli Carrillo, Assistant Professor, has received up to four years of funding from the berry research committees for a project called Ecological Pest Management for Spotted Wing Drosophila. Funding is provided by the BC Blueberry Council, Raspberry Industry Development Council and BC Strawberry Growers Association.
Soil science students earn first place at international conference
Two UBC Soil Science PhD candidates were recognized at the International Soils Meeting in San Diego earlier this year. Akshit Puri won First Place in the 5-minute Rapid Fire Oral and Poster session. Kiran Preet Padda took First Place in the Soils in Ecological Restoration Poster session. Both students competed in the Forest, Range and Wildland Soils Division, and are supervised by Christopher Chanway, a Professor in LFS and the Faculty of Forestry.
Siyun Wang wins food safety award
Congratulations to Associate Professor Siyun Wang who won a BC Food Protection Association Food Safety Award. She has worked on several food safety initiatives, including conducting a safety surveillance project in the Lower Mainland to better understand major foodborne pathogens in irrigation water used by fresh produce growers. She is now studying how to reduce the occurrence of Salmonella contamination in foods.
Hans Sigrist Foundation awards animal welfare researcher
Professor Marina von Keyserlingk was recognized by the Hans Sigrist Foundation at the University of Bern with the 2018 Hans Sigrist Prize for her outstanding academic contributions in the field of Sustainably Produced Food of Animal Origin. The Hans Sigrist Prize, equivalent to CAD$135,000, is awarded to a mid-career academic to support their research program. Award winners represent a variety of academic fields; each year’s prize field is different, based on proposals considered by the foundation’s board.
Michael Brunt, PhD candidate, wins award to study animal welfare
Michael Brunt received the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships Program Doctoral Scholarship. This is awarded from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Brunt will be pursuing a PhD under supervisor Professor Dan Weary with a focus on researching the human component of animal welfare. He hopes to improve the welfare of animals used in scientific research, and in agriculture and public venues, such as aquariums, by identifying the perceived barriers of caretakers to changing practices.
UBC research cluster to investigate child health and development
Assistant Professor Crystal Karakochuk and Associate Professors Yvonne Lamers and Angela Devlin are part of a research team led by Professor Michael Kobor that successfully obtained one year of funding through the UBC 2018 Grants for Catalyzing Research Clusters competition. Their project Harnessing the Social Exposome to Reduce Inequalities in Child Health and Development in Canada will see them working with the Faculty of Medicine and BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute.
AnimalKind expands accreditation program and earns kudos
Vancouver Foundation has awarded BC SPCA and the LFS Animal Welfare Program a grant of $300,000 to expand the AnimalKind program into other animalrelated service industries, such as dog training. Currently, AnimalKind accredits pest control companies for using progressive and science-based methods. The AnimalKind program is led by Sara Dubois, LFS Adjunct Professor and Chief Scientific Officer of the BC SPCA, who co-founded the program with support from David Fraser, LFS Professor, and two LFS alumni who are also current staff, Nicole Fenwick and Erin Ryan. Early development of the program was supported by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and Vancouver Foundation.
The AnimalKind program also won a Clements Awards from The Fur-Bearers. This is to recognize the milestone of launching the world’s first accreditation program for pest control and wildlife management. The Clements Awards is given to individuals and organizations who have contributed to the welfare of fur-bearing animals.
Thompson received his Bachelors and Masters in Agriculture from UBC in 1964 and 1966, respectively. He then completed his PhD at the University of California (Davis) in 1971. He was a Professor in Animal Biochemistry at the University of Alberta from 1971-1992, before returning to UBC as Head of the Department of Animal Science in 1992. He later served as Associate Dean of UBC’s Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
Thompson’s research program concentrated on characterizing the metabolism of amino acids in skeletal muscles and measuring protein turnover in animals under a range of physiological conditions.
A Dairy Science program has been available at UBC since the 1920s, a time when dairy cattle and other farm animals were housed on the Vancouver campus. By 1997, the dairy cattle teaching and research program had grown to include an Animal Welfare Program.
In 1997, the Dairy Education & Research Centre opened in Agassiz, B.C., in the Fraser Valley, about 130 km from the UBC Vancouver campus. From humble beginnings with dated equipment and no permanent buildings, Thompson oversaw the development of the Centre into the state-of-the-art teaching and research facility it is today.
“We welcome students and scientists from around the world, and the modern facilities enable new advances in animal welfare and dairy science,” Thompson said. Two major achievements were the opening of a new lactating cow research building for 288 lactating cows in 2000, and a new on-site student residence in 2015.
Associate Professor Ronaldo Cerri was named the new Director of the UBC Dairy Education and Research Centre on January 1, 2019.
Mobilizing Climate Action Research from University to Farm
A network in British Columbia is helping deliver climate change research directly to those who could benefit in the agriculture industry.
The BC Agricultural Climate Adaptation Research Network (ACARN) launched in May 2017 to be a conduit between agricultural researchers, industry specialists, policy makers, students and producers in the province. Sean Smukler, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems (LFS), serves as ACARN’s chair.
“Given the lack of formal agricultural extension services in the province, there is a large divide between scientists and producers,” says Smukler. “ACARN is trying to help develop strategies to bridge this divide. It feels like there’s a renewed focus to unite researchers with farming communities, and it’s been rewarding to play a small part in that.”
The network has co-coordinated six workshops across the province from Abbottsford to Fort St. John enabling scientists, producers and other agriculture professionals to share climate change adaptation research priorities and find ways to apply research findings.
In the first two years, the network has expanded from 18 to 108 members – including scientists, producers, industry representatives and government.
One of ACARN’s first research projects was to review weather data across B.C., since weather forecasting is essential for farmers to manage their water use, fertilizer and pesticide application, and animal production and welfare. This is becoming increasingly challenging in the face of climate change. The project team included Andrew Black, LFS Professor and ACARN member, and the work has provided useful recommendations on how the province’s current weather station network could provide more robust data to the agriculture industry.
In addition to coordinating research projects, ACARN initiates training opportunities for students and new professionals. ACARN recently delivered the BC Agriculture and Climate Change Education Series that was hosted at UBC Vancouver and broadcast to other post-secondary school sites: UBC Okanagan, University of Northern British Columbia, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Thompson Rivers University, Northern Lights College, and University of the Fraser Valley.
There were more than 284 participants from across the province, highlighting the excitement for this emerging area of practice among students and young professionals.
ACARN partners include researchers and staff from six universities, the BC Ministry of Agriculture, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the BC Agriculture Council and the BC Agriculture and Food Climate Action Initiative.
“We see new challenges every day and it’s essential that we take a collaborative approach to tackle climate change,” said Smukler. “There is a lot of outstanding research all over the province. ACARN is enhancing this research, promoting interdisciplinary projects, and improving the efficient use and application of climate adaptation resources.”
A new Canada-wide project led by the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS) will help organic vegetable growers find plant varieties better suited to Canadian climates and environments.
Postdoctoral Fellow Alexandra Lyon and Professor Hannah Wittman are leading a new five-year research project called Canadian Organic Vegetable Improvement (CANOVI). Funding comes from the Organic Science Cluster 3, supported by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Canadian Agricultural Partnership. The Bauta Family Initiative on Canadian Seed Security, a national group, has joined the project as an industry partner.
CANOVI focuses on participatory plant breeding of peppers and carrots – two crops identified as top priorities for organic vegetable growers in a survey the CANOVI team conducted last year.
“Most carrots are grown in a few intensive production regions like California, which means there’s not as much incentive for the private seed sector to breed varieties for Canadian climates,” says Lyon. “Organic growers are a smaller proportion of the market in terms of who’s buying seed, but they still need varieties that are well-adapted to their systems. So there’s an opportunity to improve the productivity of organic farming through public plant breeding.”
Some of the biggest challenges that organic carrot growers report in B.C. are carrot rust fly, diseases like cavity spot, and finding fast-growing varieties with good flavour and appearance. This spring, Lyon and her team are making crosses between commercial carrot varieties and experimental lines developed by public plant breeders at the University of Wisconsin. Together with local farmers, they will select a new variety out of the crosses that hopefully combines the desired traits for organic growers.
For peppers, CANOVI is supporting a similar collaboration between a public plant breeding program at Cornell University and several Ontario farmers who have been selecting sweet bell peppers with a key trait for the North: a pepper that ripens earlier than any other on the market.
“At the end of the day, the goal is to develop several varieties or populations of peppers and carrots that Canadian farmers and seed growers can continue to adapt and improve upon in their farms,” adds Lyon.
The CANOVI project takes advantage of an on-farm variety trialling network that Lyon helped establish in a previous project, the BC Seed Trials, where she collaborated with local non-profit FarmFolk CityFolk.
The CANOVI team includes Loren Rieseberg, Professor in the Faculty of Science, Andrew Riseman, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, and Marney Isaac, Associate Professor from University of Toronto.
Lyon and CANOVI’s collaborators are just getting started, but are optimistic that they will change things for Canadian organic farmers – one carrot and pepper at a time.
Find out more about CANOVI on the CSFS website at ubcfarm.ubc.ca.
