This is what Fuji Jian, associate professor at the University of Manitoba, presented in the opening session of Top Crop Manager’s virtual In the Bin: Grain Storage Seminar in early July. With a strong research background in post-harvest grain quality, grain physical properties, grain drying and aeration, grain handling, sensor development and more, Jian shared the results from four studies to provide clarity on canola storage and aeration strategies.

To read the full story, please visit the Top Crop Manager article.

Researchers at the University of Manitoba are evaluating some promising alternative options based on early research and results by farmers and agronomists. During the 2021 growing season, a few farmers and agronomists in Western Canada shared on social media their observation that flea beetle damage was lower when canola was direct seeded into rye cover crops.

To read the full story, please visit the Top Crop Manager article.

Dr. Nazanin Vafaei receives the Mitacs Outstanding Innovation Award.

Vafaei’s groundbreaking research to optimize this underutilized method for sustainable food processing has earned her the prestigious Mitacs Outstanding Innovation Award.

Research Fueled by Passion

For Nazanin Vafaei, research has been a deeply personal journey. She moved from Iran to Malaysia to pursue her research, where she witnessed firsthand the destruction of forest and wildlife habitats for palm oil production. Determined to develop a sustainable alternative, she began using supercritical fluids, a cleaner solvent-free system. However, the supercritical unit she needed was broken and, after a seven month wait, she started searching the globe for a better-equipped research facility.

Her search ultimately led her to Winnipeg, where she found the resources and mentorship, she needed at the Richardson Centre for Food Technology and Research.

“I followed my dream and l found a facility here in Winnipeg at the Richardson Center,” Vafaei says. “When I first came as a visiting researcher, I worked with Dr. Curtis Rempel and Dr. Martin Scanlon who is the Dean. In my PhD project we used supercritical fluids to develop a kind of fats that can replace palm oil with less environmental impact, lower levels of saturated fats and other health benefits.”

A New Approach to Canola Oil Extraction and Protein Preservation

First developed at the University of Manitoba, canola oil is one of the top three food oils consumed worldwide. While traditional solvent-based extraction methods are effective, supercritical fluid extraction operates at significantly lower temperatures which enhances the quality of canola meal for use in functional foods.

This new methodology, developed by Vafaei, first removes a portion of the oil through mechanical pressing, followed by high-pressure CO₂ to extract the remaining oil resulting in an oil-free canola meal. This method preserves protein integrity, making canola meal that is more suitable for high-value food applications such as plant-based burgers, high-protein pasta, and protein supplements.

“Our tests show that canola meal contains 40% protein, making it a valuable ingredient for plant-based foods,” explains Vafaei. “The supercritical fluid method uses only CO₂, a process commonly used for decaffeinating coffee. Applying this method to canola allows us to extract high-quality, expeller-pressed oil while maintaining a protein-rich meal with no oil or solvent residues.”

In addition to preserving the high protein content and amino acid profile of canola meal, tests showed this method had good functional properties, including high water-holding capacity, foaming stability and emulsification ability, crucial properties for developing dairy and meat alternatives.

“This process is practically waste-free, using only CO₂ gas, which can be repressurized and reused,” says Vafaei. “The lower temperature used in our process protects the protein’s natural structure, making the canola meal more functional for food applications.”

The next step in Vafaei’s research is to explore scaling up production, with a proposal recently submitted for potential collaboration with the University of Alberta, the University of Guelph and the University of Saskatchewan. If funded, this research will assess the commercial viability and potential industry adoption of the method.

“I congratulate Dr. Vafaei on this successful innovation and her recognition with the prestigious Mitacs award,” says Dr. Mario Pinto, Vice-President Research and International. “By following her passion, she has shown that environmentally sustainable practices can be achieved while also increasing potential economic gain. This has tremendous potential to reshape agricultural practices here in Manitoba and around the world.”

A Vision for Global Impact

Beyond the scientific and technological advancements, Dr. Nazanin Vafaei is driven by the potential global impact of her work on sustainable food production.

“Our canola oil has a lovely roasted nut aroma and a bright, golden color,” says Vafaei. “Because we use a combination of expeller pressing and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) at lower temperatures, the seeds don’t burn, and we’re able to retain more natural antioxidants.”

By preserving protein integrity and enhancing nutritional quality, her method ensures that canola meal remains a high-value ingredient for plant-based food applications worldwide.

“We’ve demonstrated an exciting proof of concept—our process maintains the full amino acid profile of canola protein while increasing antioxidant levels, thanks to the gentle extraction conditions.”

Looking ahead, Vafaei hopes this innovation will inspire broader adoption of sustainable processing methods in the food industry.

“I am truly honored to receive the Mitacs Award, and I hope the success of this project will encourage more environmentally conscious developments—not just here in Canada, but globally.”

With the growing demand for plant-based proteins and sustainable food solutions, Vafaei’s work has the potential to reshape food production practices while reducing environmental impact worldwide.

The University of Manitoba postdoctoral researcher flew to Ottawa earlier this week to accept an innovation award from Mitacs, a Canadian non-profit research organization.

“I’m really honoured,” Vafaei said. “I think it’s payoff … for all these years.”

To read the full story, please follow the link here to the Winnipeg Free Press. 

Here is a full list of this year’s MITAC winners.

Rob Gulden, a U of M researcher and acting associate head of the plant science department, says many variables affect canola harvest loss rates — and they’re tough to isolate.

There are mechanical factors, including combine speed, settings and separator type. Your chosen canola variety will also affect the amount of pod shatter.

To read the full story, please visit Grainews. 

Dr. Harmeet Chawla, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences

“These findings provide us with a better understanding of how modern-day bread wheat emerged and adapted to growing conditions around the world, and also contribute to advancing research aimed at improving current wheat crops,” says Chawla.

Emerging in the Fertile Crescent region of the Middle East between eight and eleven thousand years ago, bread wheat resulted from the interbreeding of durum wheat and the wild grass Aegilops tauschii.

The study reveals that this initial hybridization event to place around on the banks of the southern Caspian Sea. This created a genetic bottleneck making the new bread wheat lineage distinct from its wild grass relatives.

The robust adaptability of the new grain allowed cultivation to spread rapidly across a wide range of climates and soils, feeding the rise of sedentary civilization in the region. Further hybridization by farmers across this increasing agricultural region then led to improvements in gluten producing the elastic and fluffy bread dough we know today.

Harmeet Chawla is an assistant professor of plant genomics whose research focuses on genetics of nutrition and disease resistance in agriculturally important plants like canola, oats and wheat.

“In my research program I seek to leverage genomics and genetic engineering to design climate change resilient crops for Canada and the open-source data made available by the OWWC is helping us to identify genes that will protect wheat crops,” says Chawla. We also hope to mine this wild grass species for climate resilient genes that can be bred into elite wheat cultivars.”

Read the full publication in Nature.

“In animal nutrition, when something goes wrong with canola meal in diets, people say it’s because of the fibre,” Rogiewicz says. But fibre isn’t necessarily bad. We just need to understand it better, she says.

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“We wanted to see if, by manipulating plant density, we can decrease the damage of flea beetles to canola,” he says.

“We know it’s not a good idea to put a lot of insecticide on. We see those insecticides have no purpose because we can’t predict where the flea beetle will show up. What we do know is they don’t show up everywhere every year, so we are adding a lot of insecticides to the system that have no real purpose.”

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The first one is discussing oat protein, here is a blurb from the article:

Oats are well positioned to compete with dairy protein and soy, which dominate the market for protein supplements, bars and other foods.

Oats are gluten-free, they have a neutral taste and the protein may lower cholesterol.

“(And) it’s a very functional protein. It could be added to a lot of food products,” Joseph said.

“Once they figure out the other commercializing (details), it will open up a lot of opportunity for oat protein.”

Read the full article here

The second article features the importance of winter wheat as a “crop cover” deadlines, here is an expert from the article:

Changing a seeding deadline by a whole month was not trivial. Insurance underwriters thrive on data: weather, crop variety, soil, seeding dates, seeding equipment and more.

To get it, researchers backed by the University of Manitoba, Western Ag, Bayer Crop Sciences, Ducks Unlimited, Ag Canada and a host of other partners went out to get muddy collecting data on winter wheat seeding dates.

University of Manitoba agronomist Yvonne Lawley led the project.

Read the full article here

In an initial study published in the November edition of the journal Animal Feed Science and Technology, replacing standard canola meal with canola meal treated with carbohydrase enzymes increased the digestibility of the diet and decreased the abundance of E. coli in the digestive tract without compromising the growth performance of broiler chickens. But while the research team had hoped to see an increase in digestibility, it was the shift in the chickens’ gut bacteria that could prove more exciting, said Anna Rogiewicz, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba and an author on the paper with lead author Yanxing Niu, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba.

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