Calgary (Rural Roots Canada) — New, promising agtech from Advanced Agriscience aims to mitigate and, in some cases, prevent frost from forming on plants.
Dr. Collin Juurakko, Founder and CEO of Advanced Agriscience, is developing the world’s first biopesticides to inhibit frost.
“We can deliver more cost-effective frost protection so growers can save time and money and improve their production,” says Juurakko.
The technology can be deployed on any crop, from broadacres to vineyards.
The idea behind the biopesticide is to spray it on the crop when there will be a frost or freeze event.
“Our product goes into the tissue and prevents the frost from ever forming by reducing ice nucleation. If ice is even able to nucleate, we can stop the ice crystals from growing big enough to damage plant cells.”
READ MORE: Thrive Academy Continues to Put Agri-Food Technology Innovators at the Forefront
Juurakko’s journey into the agtech space started when he was an undergrad studying biochem under Virginia Walker at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
“I was inspired by some of her work and her research program. She was really pioneering the molecular basis of stress resistance, and she was working on frost tolerance, low-temperature stress.”
He joined her lab and as the saying goes the rest is history.
Juurakko would go on to take on a project studying how plants can survive sub-zero temperatures and how frost forms.
He says that work would lead to major discoveries in not only how frost forms at the molecular level but, more importantly, how to combat it at that level.
Juurakko says there are still a number of steps to go through before it gets full approval.
“We’re early stage. We’re trying to do field trials next year once we get approval from the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA).”
He says the next step after that would be to do trials on high-value crops, vineyards, apples, tree fruits, and then even the broadacre crops if we can get some field trials going there, as well.
He hopes to be conducting the trials as early as next year. For more information on the field trials click here.
Advanced Agriscience won the People’s Choice award at the recent SVG Ventures Thrive Academy Demo Day in Calgary.
