A new federal funding agreement under Growing Forward-2 will help bring together researchers from across Canada to address challenges facing Canada’s pork industry.
Last week the federal government committed 13 million dollars to the Swine Innovation Porc Science Cluster under Growing Forward-2 to support strategic research, enhance competitiveness, drive innovation, and promote long-term growth and sustainability of the Canadian swine industry.
Swine Innovation Pork chair Stewart Cressman suggests key is the collaborative effort you can create among different research institutions across the country.
By nature I think researchers tend to work at times in isolation at their own institutions working on things that they have expertise in and the cluster allows the opportunity to collaborate across institutions and we see that of great benefit, the cross pollination of ideas between researchers at the universities sector, at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and some great researchers they have there as well.
And as well, in some of the other arms length agencies, certainly Prairie Swine although it is connected with the University of Saskatchewan has a very focussed portfolio on applied research, the Canadian Centre for Swine Improvement is involved in projects, Livestock Gentec associated with the University of Alberta and PigGen Canada, breeding companies, genetic companies.
So it really brings a consortium together of various stakeholders and various research thrusts and having the interaction between various researchers.
Fifteen research projects have been identified.
Cressman stresses the focus continues to be on applied research that can be taken to the farm within three to five years.
