Food security under control

We are dedicated to providing plant pathogen detection and monitoring for hydroponic farms to ensure healthy crops and food safety.

Our innovative team of technical and microbial experts combines sequencing technology and our in-house database built from sampling various hydroponic farms.

Our process identifies plant pathogens, foodborne pathogens, and uniquely to our project, hydroponic microbiomes.

We aim to deliver rapid, sensitive detection of key pathogens and practical data to help growers reduce crop loss, financial loss, and maintain a healthy hydroponic system.

Monitor my hydroponic system

Services

What We Do

We work with growers to sample the microorganisms in their hydroponic systems.

We determine the microbial communities, plant pathogens, and foodborne pathogens as well as their relative abundance in hydroponic systems through DNA sequencing.

We determine the health of hydroponic systems and generate actionable data so that growers can be prepared to take action to prevent crop and financial loss and to ensure safe food.

Our CAP– and NRC– funded projects aim to explore the microbiome of greenhouse vegetable and commercial cannabis production, and how it can be harnessed for production benefits, including product yield, quality and control of disease-causing microbes.

We are looking for Ontario greenhouse, indoor farm and commercial cannabis operators who would be interested in participating. This would entail our research staff coming on site to collect samples from nutrient solution and roots for microbiome analysis. Alternatively, we send out sampling kits allowing growers to sample themselves. Data will be shared and reviewed with the growers. If you are interested, or still have questions, please let us know here.