Government announce funding through the Innovative Solutions Canada program  

March 15, 2022 – Ottawa, Ontario – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Innovative Solutions Canada (ISC) helps Canadian innovators who want to start, grow, and get to market, by funding research & development and testing prototypes in real-life settings.

Today, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, announced an investment of over $860,000 in six projects under the Innovative Solutions Canada (ISC) program. Funds will be to advance automation and robotic technologies to solve challenges in these agricultural sectors.

Under the Canadian Meat Processing Technology Development Challenge, projects include:

• E.O.I Technologies Inc. will help meat processors proactively predict and prevent contamination, automate inspection, and optimize management of conveyors through a developed innovative technology for seamless and real-time monitoring of modular conveyors.

Under the Enhancing Automation in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Farming Challenge, projects include:

• Exonetik Inc. will develop a robotic system to enable a multitude of tasks that are notoriously difficult to automate, such as fruit and vegetable harvesting.
• GWS Vertical Farms Inc. will build and test a fully functioning vertical farm using aeroponics to grow leafy greens. This will reduce human errors, minimize the introduction of contamination, and reduce the consumption of resources.
• Sinopa Energy Inc. will enhance and provide cost effective and efficient harvesting of mushrooms in existing facilities through their Artiflex system.
• Stratuscent Inc. will tackle labour intensity through their digital nose technology that detects and interprets odours to monitor the crop ripening process and to detect early signs of spoilage.
• Truly Northern Inc. will use their GroStack Automation Project to finalize the vertical farming system design for commercial distribution and reduce identified labour costs by integrating cost-effective automation solutions and increasing production output by using Artificial Intelligence and remote monitoring to optimize growing conditions.

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Government of Canada invests in innovation and technology to tackle challenges in agriculture