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Made in Manitoba: Can you identify this berry?

Seabuckthorn growing near Beausejour, Manitoba.

Seabuckthorn berries are among the most nutritious and vitamin-rich fruits found in the plant kingdom, but they're still not very well known in North America. The Manitoba Seabuckthorn Growers Association used an $89,000 ARDI grant to explore ways to efficiently remove the tiny berries from their prickly branches. In September, ARDI participated in a field day at the Fedora Farm. Staff from the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute demonstrated how freezing cut branches helps make harvesting the crop more efficient.

View a seabuckthorn photo story from the September field day.

Sugar Maples in Full Colour

In May 2007, ARDI put $66,000 towards a reserach project that could result in more Sugar Maple trees growing in Manitoba. In Manitoba, we are just outside the natural range of Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum), but researchers are now looking for an economical way to help them successfully propogate here. That would add some bright reds and oranges to our fall colours and bring more diversity to the tree species planted in rural and urban Manitoba.

See an ARDI-produced video on Sugar Maples.

Welcome Digvir Jayas

ARDI Council has a new member. Dr. Digvir Jayas is Associate Vice-President (Research) at the University of Manitoba. For a full listing of ARDI's nine-member Council, please see ARDI's website.

Application Deadline

If you have an agricultural research or development project that you think will benefit Manitoba's agricultural community, submit an application to ARDI. Applications are due Feb 1, 2008. You can find more information online.

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Please contact ARDI’s Communications Coordinator, Rhea Yates, at rheayates@mts.net

Combining flax and canola oils for heart health?

The Metabolic Kitchen at the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals

What happens when you take flax oil and canola oil, both heart-healthy oils, and mix them together? It just might be a “higher horsepower, higher octane fuel for the body,” in the words of Dr. Peter Jones, Director of the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals.

Jones is leading a clinical research study to investigate the effects of canola and flax oils in reducing cholesterol and preventing heart disease. Canola oil is high in heart-healthy monounsaturated fats and Omega 3 fatty acids, while flax is an outright powerhouse in Omega 3s. As for the "bad guy" fats, both oils are very low in saturated fat and both contain no trans fats.

Starting at about 6:30 every morning, the volunteers start arriving at the back door of the Richardson Centre. They head up one flight of stairs and emerge at a small cafeteria where they are served a nutritious breakfast. Each ingredient has been weighed and measured down to the final gram, to make sure that participants are taking in exactly the right amount of calories for their height and weight. In the test diet, 70 per cent of the fat the participants are consuming is coming from the canola and flax oils.

Leah Gillingham (left), the PhD student coordinating the canola/flax study explains that “by controlling the diet and providing all the meals for the participants, we can determine the specific effects canola and flax oil have on cholesterol levels and heart disease risk.”

On this day, the participants are eating a tomato omelet, some bagel and a breakfast shake. (If you’re wondering where the oil is hidden, it’s in the breakfast shake. Flax oil is heat sensitive, so it can’t be in the frying pan with the eggs). After breakfast, the participants head off to home or work, picking up cooler bags containing their lunches and dinners as they leave. That’s right – study participants are not allowed to eat anything but the food that has been prepared for them. Definitely no snacking on the side, although the people taking part don’t seem to mind.

“We’re really enjoying it,” says study participant Janice Bailey, who eats breakfast with the same small group of people each morning. “We’re really getting to know each other and I don’t have to cook, that’s fabulous!

Clinical research trials like this are very expensive. A small army of people arrives at the Richardson Centre each morning to make sure everyone gets the right breakfast. In addition to the kitchen staff, there are research staff and other assistants, like the nurse who is on hand to draw blood at regular intervals throughout the five-month study.

The Richardson Centre doesn’t have the money to fund this kind of research on its own. Both the canola and flax industries are supporting the study, through the Flax Canada 2015 and the Canola Council of Canada. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Manitoba, Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives are supporting the research through the Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative (ARDI).

“The members of ARDI Council saw the potential to increase the value of both crops through this research,” says ARDI Council Chair David Gislason. “If there are heart-health benefits to be gained from eating a canola/flax oil blend, then I have no doubt that consumers would be interested in mixing the oils themselves, or better yet, buying a new canola/flax blended oil.”

Back at the Richardson Centre, study participants cheerfully submit to a regular series of tests. In addition to blood tests, they’ll be asked to lie down for a DEXA scan, an MRI-like machine which measures bone mineral density and body composition. They will also spend several hours at a time with a clear hood over their faces, as researchers measure how much oxygen they’re taking in and how much carbon dioxide they’re breathing out.

“Just like a car gets rusted out, so do your innards,” says Dr. Jones with a laugh, explaining that the test reveals how much energy participants expend metabolizing their meals.

Finally, Dr. Jones is keenly interested in fat reserves, those little pockets of fat seem to like to gather at the hips or on the backside. This project may shed some light on whether the fat in the flax/canola oil blend is less likely to stick around in our bodies compared to other fats. “Omega 3s might be more rapidly disposed of as energy than retained as fat reserves,” he says, which would be more good news for people struggling to keep a few extra pounds off.

The clinical trials will be wrapping up this summer, so stay tuned for the results.