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Feature
Stories
Celtic Power developing
community-sized biodiesel with producers in
mind
Reducing
nitrogen costs
Good news
for barley
Unravelling mystery of
beer foam makes national news
ARDI-funded research into
beer foam was featured on Global
National in December. The volume of foam
produced after pouring is important to both brewers and consumers,
but exactly why certain beers foam more than others has always been
a mystery. Using the latest technology for studying and
characterizing proteins, Dr. Werner
Ens (Dept. Physics and Astronomy, U of
M) and Dr. Marta
Izydorczyk (Grain Research Lab,
Canadian Grain Commission) are isolating the
proteins involved in foam production and beer clarity. Canadian
malting barley generates about $500 million annually, with the
majority of revenues coming from the export market. Helping brewers
get that perfect beer every time may increase the competitiveness of
Canadian malting barley on the world stage.
New soup sold in Tetra
Pak
Peak of the Market,
Manitoba's grower-owned vegetable supplier, recently launched a new
line of gourmet soups in resealable Tetra Pak containers. The soup
is produced at the Great Plains Aseptic
Processing (GPAP) plant located within
the Food Development
Centre in Portage la Prairie. ARDI
provided a $1.4 million grant to GPAP to allow Manitoba food
processors to test product ideas using Tetra Pak equipment. In a
separate grant, ARDI contributed $37,000 to a group of carrot
producers as they tested their products for new soup ideas. This
work eventually led to the development of Peak of the Market soups.
Peak of the Market
President Larry
McIntosh says "if the Tetra Pak equipment
was not available to us, we probably never would have gotten into
soups. We seized the opportunity."
Pasmo in
flax
Controlling pasmo in flax
is the goal of research by Dr. Lakhdar Lamari
(Dept. Plant Science, U of
M) and Dr. Khalid Rashid
(AAFC Research Station,
Morden). This ARDI-funded research is
featured in the latest issue of
Flax
Focus (Vol. 18 #2). Disease surveys in Manitoba show pasmo is
found in 90 per cent of flax crops, leading to yield losses, reduced
grade and lower farm-gate returns.
Approved
projects
ARDI Council meets in March to review funding
applications submitted by the Feb. 1 deadline. Projects approved in
November 2005 can be found on
ARDI’s home page.
Project
percolating?
If you have a project in
mind, but aren't sure if it's a good fit with ARDI, please check
with Lori-Ann Kaminski, ARDI's Program Officer, to learn more about
eligibility criteria.
Lori-Ann
Kaminski,
ARDI Program
Officer
Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural
Initiatives
Agri-Food Innovation and Adaptation
Branch
65
3rd Avenue NE,
Box 1149
Carman, MB R0G 0J0
phone: (204)
745-5637
fax: (204) 745-5690
email:
lkaminski@gov.mb.ca
Want to subscribe to the
newsletter or comment on anything you’ve read
here?
Please
contact ARDI’s Communications Coordinator,
Rhea
Yates, at
rheayates@mts.net
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Biodiesel project aims
for closed loop system
Gavin
(l) and Brian Reynolds beside their nearly-completed biodiesel
processor
A family-owned operation
in a Manitoba community has high hopes for making biodiesel
generators affordable for small producer groups. The key to economic
efficiency lies in creating a closed loop system that leaves very
little in the way of unusable byproducts, according to
Gavin
Reynolds of Celtic Power and
Machining in Rapid
City.
"Our goal is not to
centralize a large refinery but to develop a modular system tailored
to rural locations," says Reynolds. With the help of ARDI funding,
Celtic Power and Machining is testing a closed loop system that
could be especially attractive to livestock
operators.
The process starts with a
skid mounted biodiesel processor, developed for easy transport and
installation. Almost any variety of oil or grease - from food-grade
vegetable oil to used cooking oil - can be turned into biodiesel.
Reynolds anticipates the farm co-operatives that are his target
market will be interested in the added value that comes from
processing poor quality grains into biodiesel fuel.
The second part of the
process deals with glycerine, the major co-product that comes from
making biodiesel. Glycerine can be sold to the cosmetics and
pharmaceutical industries, but with biodiesel becoming more popular
in North America and Europe, Reynolds expects the price for
glycerine to drop. That's why his system anticipates the need for
two processing options for glycerine: high-grade glycerine for
commercial resale and a raw grade for anaerobic digester use.
Glycerine speeds up the digestion of animal waste, such as from a
hog barn, and also permits the use of a smaller
digester.
"If you have biodiesel
and you produce glycerine, then you can feed the glycerine to
digesters, which creates the fertilizer product and also produces
gas for combustion," Reynolds says. The final step is to generate
enough heat and electricity from the gas to sustain a hog barn and
operate a biodiesel plant, closing the energy
loop.
The potential benefits of
such a system include:
- improved
waste management for the livestock operation
- fertilizer
product from the digested material
- biodiesel
production for fuel
- decreased/no
energy bills
Celtic Power and
Machining has a lengthy the track record in biodiesel, including
working with the City of Brandon to run transit buses on biodiesel.
For more information, see www.celticpower.ca.
Cover crops: reducing
economic losses due to excess moisture?
Excess precipitation
during the growing season has plagued Manitoba farmers in recent
years. In fact, water-soaked fields are a leading cause of grain
crop failure in the eastern part of the province. For the next two
years, Dr. Martin
Entz with the University of
Manitoba's Department of Plant Science,
will be researching the effectiveness of cover crops to mop up
excess water and reduce nitrogen losses.
 Cover crops differ from
traditional field and forage crops in two ways:
- cover
crops are typically grown outside the main grain crop growth
period; and
- cover
crops are grown for service, not for harvest. Cover crops can help
to control erosion and weeds, take up excess water or reduce soil
salinity.
Solid-seeded
beans into glyphosate-killed fall rye,
Carman
Until
recently, however, you'd be more likely to find cover crops in
southern Ontario, with its longer growing season, than you would in
Manitoba. But, Dr. Entz believes cover crops present an opportunity
for Manitoba growers. With the support of ARDI funds, his research
will test whether cover crops can reduce the negative effects of
excess precipitation and reduce nitrogen fertilizer costs. Field
trials will be conducted in Selkirk, Ste.
Agathe, Somerset, Carman
and Miami. One trial is also planned for
southwestern Manitoba.
Dr. Entz will be
conducting research trials on winter
wheat, canola and
dry
edible beans to evaluate different cover
crop species and management systems. Various clovers and alfalfa
will be used as cover crops for winter wheat and canola, while fall
rye will be the cover crop tested for dry edible
beans.
The potential economic
benefits to farmers are significant: Previous Manitoba studies
showed that legumes after winter wheat added between 25 and 60 kg/ha
of nitrogen to a following oat crop, reducing the fertilizer
requirement by about 30 per cent.
Good news for
barley researchers and consumers
U.S. food products
containing barley can now be sold with the health claim that
eating these foods can reduce the risk of heart disease.
That's because the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration recently published
an amendment to the health claim for soluble fibre and
coronary heart disease to include barley.
ARDI has funded
several barley-as-food projects, including research conducted
by Dr. Nancy
Ames, at the Cereal
Research Centre of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Canada. Ames has conducted
extensive research into barley's use in tortillas and tortilla
chips and says the new health claim could give a real boost to
these types of products.
“The label claim
should lead to greater efforts by U.S. food manufacturers to
use many of the unique characteristics of barley for a wider
variety of food products. Prior to this new FDA ruling, food
processors were not really compelled to develop food products
from a grain that was not traditionally considered “food” in
North America," said Ames.
"Now that food
marketers can use the heart health claim for barley food
products there is much greater incentive for processors to
become more familiar with barley cultivars and their various
cultivar-specific advantages in a number of food systems. The
benefits of the new health claim will be felt in Canada too
since we have a number of registered cultivars developed
primarily for the food market. A number of Canadian research
programs have been studying the application and optimization
of these cultivars in specific foods for at least a
decade."
Ames says the
consumer will really gain the most from this new barley heart
health claim since they will have the opportunity to choose
from a greater variety of foods containing fibre components
that help reduce cholesterol and lower the risk of heart
disease.
More about the
FDA
decision. |
