News related to Alliance Impact

The advent of sexed dairy semen has brought new options for Canadian dairy farmers. The best cows and heifers can be bred to ensure production of female calves, and older or lower-quality cows can be bred with beef semen to deliver a new revenue stream of crossbred calves. These “beef on dairy” calves are born on the dairy farm and raised as a beef animal for market.

 Dr. Michael Steele believes there is much we need to learn about this new market segment. 

A collaboration between U of G's Dr. George van der Merwe, professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Escarpment Laboratories, supplier of liquid yeast cultures for Ontario’s $1.4-billion craft beer industry, has led to new products, processes and technologies that will benefit the Ontario agri-food sector.

Dairy calves are an integral part of Ontario’s $2.2-billion dairy industry. Access to a world-class research and innovation system — including the Ontario Dairy Research Centre and six Alliance-funded projects over 18 years — resulted in better on-farm pain management practices during disbudding (the process of removing the horn bud in young calves for the safety of other cows and farm staff) and the licensing of a new pain management drug in Europe and Canada. Long-term Alliance investment helped identify and promote the new pain management  protocol.

Omid Norouzi, a PhD candidate and Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) scholar in the School of Engineering, aims to cut global greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural and food waste by converting that waste into fuel.

Plant agriculture professor Jayasankar Subramanian and his team are developing new technologies to decrease fruit spoilage, part of Ontario’s annual food waste that costs a total of $12 billion per year.