During the recent Canadian Greenhouse Conference, bus tour participants had a chance to visit Vineland's recently opened pre-commercial research greenhouse. The large scale greenhouse complex is one of North America's largest and most modern, independent research greenhouses.
Vineland's Michael Brownbridge, Research Director Horticultural production Systems, welcomed the group and explained about the importance of innovation in the Canadian horticulture industry and how Vineland's research addresses issues in vegetable and floriculture production.
Several Vineland researchers were available to show us some snippets of their research programs. Anissa Poleatewich, research scientist plant pathology, and Rose Buitenhuis, research scientist Biological Controls, gave insight in their current study for new biocontrol strategies, as well as research on developing new solutions against phythium and fusarium in multiple cropping situations.
Amy Bowen, Research Program Leader Consumer Insights, and David Liscombe, Research Scientist Biochemistry, explained why Vineland has teamed up with the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers to develop two new hybrid greenhouse tomato varieties with new and different flavor profiles. The researchers explained how they find out what consumers like and dislike in a tomato and how to transfer the outcome in a breeding process.
Viliam Zvalo, Research Scientist Vegetable Production Systems, gave us an update on Vineland's search for new ethnic high wire eggplant varieties as part of their World Crops Program. As they have already determined consumer preferences, they are now in a stage that they are trying to meet retail criteria as well as grower criteria and achieve maximum yields. As well as this, Zvalo spoke about their grafting experiments with different rootstocks as well optimizing plant densities.
Click here to learn more about the current research projects at Vineland in their latest 2016-2017 Innovation Report