By Angela Lovell
Lethbridge Polytechnic, formerly Lethbridge College, placed 10th in the 2024 Research Infosource rankings of the top 50 research colleges in Canada. Its Centre for Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CARIE) offers programs in many specialties, including agriculture, with a focus on research that directly benefits Alberta growers in areas such as irrigation, crop storage and handling. This fast-growing institution has expanded its facilities and increased research funding by more than $34 million since 2018.
One-size-fits-all solutions are becoming increasingly rare in agriculture, which is why detailed and nuanced applied research is so important to farmers and the industry. It’s all about meeting the changing needs and allowing for flexible solutions that can fit the many different situations that exist on farms across Alberta and Western Canada, helping to make them more profitable and sustainable.
Focusing on irrigation technology
Alberta has about 70 per cent of the irrigated land in Canada, mostly concentrated in the semi-arid southern region that forms a triangle between Calgary, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat. With an abundance of natural water flowing from the mountains, irrigation is important for farmers to push their yields of cereals and oilseeds, but also allows them to grow unique crops like sugar beet and potatoes.
Irrigated crops contribute 20 per cent to Alberta’s agricultural GDP, so it is little surprise that Lethbridge Polytechnic is home to the Mueller Irrigation Research Group (MIRG) and a 385-acre research demonstration farm. In addition to conventional overhead irrigation systems, it also features a subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) experimental facility designed and built in partnership with Southern Irrigation.
“Nobody 10 years ago would have thought that subsurface irrigation would be a thing for growing field crops, but it’s gaining traction and it is something we have put a lot of research towards to find out how it works for a large-scale operation,” says Dr. Willemijn Appels, senior research chair for MIRG.
Overall, the main focus of MIRG’s research is water use efficiency at the field scale. “Our goal is to try and address variations on the landscape in terms of soils, topography and plants by applying water at the right time, in the right position, the right location and in the amounts that crops need it,” Appels says.
Work at MIRG tries to assess which practical and feasible irrigation tools producers can use to achieve maximum value. Researchers use laboratory experiments, computer models and field trials to observe the water balance and cycle within agricultural fields to help understand those processes, and which of them are more important at different times during the growing season. They also look at different types of irrigation technology that might help improve how growers apply and get water efficiently to the plants.
Farmers provide impetus
Many of the ideas for research projects at MIRG come from farmers or grower associations.
“Often an idea will come from a conversation with a farmer who, for example, is interested in trying something new – perhaps a new sensor or variable rate irrigation technology. Or they want to establish a greenhouse gas emissions baseline in their fields, but they don’t know how much impact these things would have or how they can interpret the data,” Appels says. “We try to collaborate with them and either design a project that takes place on their property, create something bigger at a number of properties, or host it at the research farm.”
Feedback from farmers is vital to inform MIRG’s work. A great example is the four-year project it has just completed with five large potato farms. Researchers visited every week throughout the growing season each year to try to determine the variability of the potato-growing landscape throughout southern Alberta and where there is potential for new technologies such as variable rate irrigation.
“We had a lot of interaction with farmers and that was valuable for us to learn more about the standards and the baseline of the industry, as well as the topic that we were investigating,” Appels says. “Farmers appreciated that we came out there, and did the observations, and were respectful of their fields, and we trained a lot of students as well, so it was a great experience.”
Research farm allows real-world trials
Although farmers have always been (and continue to be) invaluable partners and collaborators to trial different research at their farms, the addition of the research farm has allowed the MIRG team to do more detailed experiments that are closer to real-world farm conditions.
“It allows us to do comparison treatments including control treatments, because it’s not reasonable to ask farmers to not water a part of their land as a control treatment,” Appels says. “And it is sized in between a research facility and an actual farm size, so we can test say, a best management practice that came out of small plot trials on a larger scale, using commercial-sized equipment, and in a field that has some of the variability that you might encounter on a real farm.”
Farmers are also invited to the research demonstration farm for field days and events where they can see in more detail what the researchers are doing and learn about the results. That’s important because farmers are at the heart of everything they do.
“It is important that everything we do is in line with where the industry is going, and that we understand the limitations or obstacles to implementing new things,” Appels says. “Engaging with farmers opens up the floor to explore that conversation and make sure that our results will find room in the real world afterwards.”
What’s new in irrigation?
Over the past 20 years, there have been huge advances in irrigation technology, and variable rate (VR) irrigation is the hot new idea in irrigation today. Research into VR irrigation is ongoing at MIRG, but it could be a while before it’s feasible for farmers to implement.
“We are trying to figure out how to switch off sprinkler nozzles on certain pieces where you have too much water already,” Appels says. “Another aspect is looking at how you could create maps for under that pivot circle with sensors mounted on the pivot and in the soil that talk to each other, and then an analyzing model creates a map and adjusts the amount of water each time the pivot goes around. But the return on investment isn’t quite there yet for most people.”
Reducing post-harvest losses a key focus
Another major research focus for Lethbridge Polytechnic is post-harvest technology, including storage handling and maintaining crop quality during storage.
“My program focuses on post-harvest technology, and always in the back of my mind is how we can minimize losses of any crops – the major cereal grains, oilseeds and pulses, but also sugar beets and potatoes,” says Dr. Chandra Singh, RDAR research chair in agricultural engineering and technology, and director of the Advanced Post-harvest Technology Centre (APHTC) at Lethbridge Polytechnic. “Minimizing losses means more food to feed people, which is important for food security, and also sustainability of farms because all of farmers’ hard work and inputs are lost if they have harvest losses.”
Again, the impetus for the research always comes from farmers, and it was the dreadful harvest conditions of 2019 – causing close to $750 million of losses for farmers across Canada – that prompted Singh and his team to delve deeply into grain drying technology and practices for all major crops.
In collaboration with Alberta Grains and the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission, Singh worked with 30 farmers across Alberta, doing research on their farms and at APHTC to help them improve their grain drying efficiency.
“If you can improve the drying, you can harvest the crop and help reduce some of those risks,” Singh says. “Even if you can improve it by 10 per cent, that is a saving of $75 million in terms of the kinds of losses we saw in 2019.”
Expanded laboratory capabilities
Over the past four years, the federal and provincial governments, along with industry partners, have invested $2.4 million into expanding APHTC’s state-of-the-art laboratory facilities. It now boasts an imaging lab, grain testing lab, wet chemistry lab, and food quality testing and analytical chemistry labs.
“It means that we can bring in crop samples and do most of the quality testing very precisely in our own labs. We can measure sugar content, specific gravity, protein and moisture content, falling numbers test, gluten content tests, etc.,” Singh says. “As well, we can do other analytical and food safety testing studies at the centre.”
Singh’s team is also working on projects with the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers, looking to help solve their unique storage challenges (as sugar beets are stored outside), and the Potato Growers of Alberta and potato processors to reduce potato shrinkage losses during storage.
Farmers at the heart of everything
Singh emphasizes that farmers’ input is vital to the work they do.
“We need to understand the practical side because scientists can come up with a novel solution, but can it be applied on the farms?” he says. “Do they have the logistics? Is it practical? Do they have time, labour, money? Is it cost effective? Can we scale it up? When we talk to farmers and see their operations and how they deal with challenges, we can determine if our solution is going to help them or create more problems. If it is going to create more problems, no one will adopt it.”
Over the past decade, storage and harvest systems have changed fast with the advancement of new sensors, the Internet of Things and cloud-based, wireless technology, as farmers can now monitor their facilities on their cellphones in real time. Singh and his team are continuing to work on research that improves on these technologies and on management strategies to help improve the bottom line for Alberta farmers and help feed a growing world population.
“We need to support our growers so we have enough food for people, and minimizing spoilage is important because any spoilage is a direct loss to the producer at the farm gate.”
Along with irrigation and post-harvest themes, the Integrated Agriculture Technology Centre made up of the Aquaculture Centre of Excellence and Centre for Sustainable Food Production is another area of applied research at Lethbridge Polytechnic.