Team:Calgary
The Current Canola Pipeline
And Its Losses
The Farmer
Canada is home to roughly 43,000 canola farmers. In 2018, over 21% of the canola samples received by the Canadian Grain Commission were downgraded due to high green seed content with many samples containing over 20% green seeds. This means that their selling price was halved.
The Elevator
Grain elevators currently rely on human labour to grade all of the seed batches they receive. This process requires lots of time and money to do.
The Processor
The process of converting canola seeds into canola is a complex process that involves several steps. These are traditionally carried out by oil processing plants throughout Canada. Companies like Viterra, Richardson, and Cargill produce 18.4 metric tonnes of canola oil each year. Canola seeds with high chlorophyll content introduce significant costs to the refining process and processing plants must refuse certain batches that contain too many green seeds. Furthermore, the small amount of chlorophyll that’s extracted is essentially a waste product with no further use.
The Market
Canola oil is used in a variety of end products like salad dressings, biofuels, printer inks, and even cosmetics. Canada’s canola market is hotbed for innovation.
Our Proposed Pipeline
And Its Benefits
The Farmer *
By empowering farmers with tools to better manage fungal pathogens, seeding practices, and standardizing the grading of seeds, canola producers will be better equipped to deal with these issues. Pheophorbide A, a new method for preventing Sclerotinia sclerotium could result in a significant decrease in cases of fungal infection. Sunny days, a novel long-term weather prediction model, gives farmers the ability to better determine when to plant their crops. Lastly, a standardized seed grading system ensures that farmers get a fair evaluation of their crops.
The Elevator *
Through our standardized grading system, elevators will be able to grade their seeds fast and effectively without the need for human labour. Our system will also limit the number of disputes that happen between farmers and elevators as seeds will be graded in an objective and thorough manner.
The Processor *
The extraction of chlorophyll from canola oil and its later conversion to pheophorbide opens up a totally new avenue for oil processing. By implementing our process into their workflows, oil processing plants will be able to gain a new revenue stream and integrate themselves into a new market segment.
The Market *
Consumers will be happy to know that the canola oil in their kitchens can now be produced in an environmentally friendly way. In addition, a new market segment is introduced with the creation of pheophorbide. Both researchers and fungicide manufacturers can purchase this compound from oil producers.
** A Fungicide for Canola Plants **
Fungal infection of canola crops results in substantially lower grade seeds. Particularly, the infection of crops by Sclerotinia sclerotium is the most prevalent among canola and modern crops are not effectively protected against using farmers’ usual prevention methods; ie. crop rotation and resistant strains of canola. In order to fight these infections, we propose to use pheophorbide a’s photosensitizing capabilities as a new antifungal agent. S. sclerotium infects crops by first landing on the petals of the plant and then making its way into the shoot. By spraying crops with pheophorbide a there will be inhibition of the invading fungus before it infects the plant by finding its way inside the plant, thus stopping the spread of infection. We have shown that pheophorbide a acts to inhibit mycelial growth of S. sclerotium and may have some inhibition specificity as per our comparison with its effect on Pestalotiopsis microspora.
** Pheophorbide **
Pheophorbide a is our way to repurpose extracted chlorophyll from green oil and make a new market stream for green seed. As both a catabolite of the chlorophyll degradation pathway and a photosensitizer, pheophorbide a creates new value in a place unexplored in the current industry. Using a chlorophyll binding protein (6GIX) we are able to extract chlorophyll from green oil and repurpose it using four enzymes involved in chlorophyll degradation (CBR, HCAR, SGR, PPH), which turns chlorophyll a and b into pheophorbide a. This compound has recently gained interest in the research community as an anti-cancer and anti-fungal treatment through photodynamic therapy - by which light is shone on the compound, releasing radical oxygen species, which can damage the cell structure of cancerous and fungal cells.
Project Highlights
Green is the different between profit and loss.
Chlorophyll Repurposing
An Anti-Fungal Treatment
Fungal growth has proven to be a destructive condition for canola plants and we may have found a solution.
Modelling
Understanding our protein in different environments
With the direction, knowledge, and tools supplied by Dr. Anderson we were equipped to design the experiments that would allow for the better understanding of the 6GIX protein in multiple systems.
Software
Optimizing the production and synthesis of DNA
Codon optimization is a standard problem in synthetic biology. We created a tool that removes repeats, hairpins, and keeps GC richness below a certain percentage.
Entrepreneurship
Commercializing our Project
Over the summer, we examined the entrepreneurial aspects of our project and navigated intellectual property regulations and market analysis techniques.