A project by scientists at Université de Montréal, the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), and Western University, in Ontario, has been awarded $6,545,700 in funding to help reduce agri-food byproducts and their greenhouse gas emissions.
Louise Hénault-Éthier, associate professor at the INRS and director of its Eau Terre Environnement research centre.
In Canada, agriculture, as well as food waste and its management, together produce more CO2 in a single year than passenger transportation. With that in mind, new approaches are essential to reduce the carbon footprint of the country's agri-food sector.
As the climate crisis continues, the team co-directed by professors Joan Laur (IRBV) and Louise Hénault-Ethier (INRS) has set itself the goal of better understanding and optimizing the way microorganisms transform organic matter. In other words, how are agri-food byproducts or food leftovers biodegraded by microorganisms, fungi or insects that feed on them?
"We're hoping to optimize natural transformation bioreactors, such as mushroom and insect farms, which are already used by urban farmers; with this process, waste will be transformed into food or fertilizers," says Laur, a co-investigator on the project and member of UdeM's Plant Biology Research Institute (IRBV).
"We can really reduce the carbon footprint of the agri-food system by creating a circular economy inspired by the natural functioning of ecosystems, and optimize these applications using the power of genomics," adds her co-investigator Hénault-Éthier, an associate professor at the INRS and director of its Eau Terre Environnement research centre.
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