hello everybody we're going to get started just after 1 30 here so good afternoon and thank you for joining us today my name is rebecca dunn and i'm the research station outreach coordinator in the office of research with the agri-food partnership so today's webinar we're featuring the ontario aquaculture research center and this is the final installment of a four-part webinar series so we featured one uh research center for each webinar if you weren't able to tune into those we can provide links to you um so this series was developed to demonstrate how ontario's agricultural research centers support our provincial and federal agriculture sectors by providing a platform for collaboration innovation and provide a space for researchers to conduct the latest research that advances the agri-food sector this webinar series is hosted by the ontario agri-food innovation alliance which is a collaboration between the ontario ministry of agriculture food and rural affairs and the university of guelph during today's webinar we're going to hear from dr david huben from the department of animal bio sciences at the university of guelph and r.j taylor who is the co-owner of cedar crest trout farms and the managing director of the ontario aquaculture association they will be talking to us about how access to the aquaculture research center enables research and benefits the aquaculture sector before we begin just a couple things related to housekeeping so if you would like to submit questions throughout the webinar please do questions i will be asking these questions to the presenters at the end so if you use a q a function it should be at the bottom of your screen if you think of anything throughout the presentation please put it down there and i'll make note of it and ask it to the presenters at the end um captions are also available at the bottom of your screen uh and lastly today's presentation will be recorded so that we can make it available to those who weren't able to attend today so now we're going to have the opportunity to hear from the vice president of research at the university of guelph malcolm campbell and lauren hepburn the chair of the agricultural research institute of ontario as they give their opening remarks hello everyone my name is malcolm campbell and i have the pleasure and privilege of serving as the vice president research at the university of guelph i'm here today to talk to you about agricultural research centers centers that we operate on behalf of the agricultural research institute of ontario and the ontario ministry of agriculture food and rural affairs these agricultural research centers are operated by university of guelph as part of the ontario agri-food innovation alliance a remarkable partnership between omafra and the university of guelph these agricultural research centers are located right across the province in traditional indigenous territory this territory has been occupied by indigenous people for millennia where they themselves have been involved in agricultural practices and where they remind us that we are bound to this traditional territory through the dish with one spoon covenant a covenant that reminds us that we all could consume collectively out of one bowl with but one spoon it's a good reminder of what it is that we do at these agricultural research centers because there we generate knowledge that we all share collectively and the knowledge that we create at these research stations is phenomenal it's phenomenal because it addresses the real world priorities of the ontario agriculture and food sector so the research that we conduct generates discoveries that in turn fuel innovation that in turn increase productivity enhance sustainability lead to greater job creation and trade as such these research centers are phenomenal engines for driving forward the productivity of ontario's remarkable multi-billion dollar agriculture and food sector the research that is done at these centers is done in partnership it's not done alone it's done with university of guelph researchers working together with colleagues in omafra as well as working together with many private and public sector partners sectors from partners from other universities as well as partners from industry and importantly people for whom the discoveries really make a difference our agriculture and food sector partners here in the province from farmers all the way to consumers we're immensely proud of the research that emerges from the agriculture research centers here in the province of ontario and it gives us the greatest the pleasure to share with you through this series the incredible game-changing differences that we're making it now gives me the greatest pleasure to turn things over to the chair of the board of directors of the agricultural research institute of ontario lauren hepworth hello everyone and thank you for joining us for this webinar my name is lauren hepworth and i'm the chair of the agricultural research institute of ontario or a-r-i-o as it's more commonly known a-r-i-o is an agency of the government of ontario with responsibility for providing strategic advice to our minister on agri-food research priorities modernizing the province's agri-food research facilities and oversight of competitive research programs and finally management of the 15 research properties that are owned by ario this network of research stations includes facilities that focus on virtually every major agriculture sector ar i o invests in these properties because they are critical to research advancement and bringing innovation to ontario ons they are world-class facilities that are available to researchers and students including such places as the newly built elora beef barn they are a platform for research that drives innovation sustainability and productivity keeping our agri-food sector competitive both locally and globally ari works closely with the university of guelph which provides property management and research expertise to ensure these facilities run efficiently this strong relationship among ario omafra and the university of guelph ensures the research stations are built optimized and maintained to accommodate future-facing demand-driven research and innovation that benefits all of ontario i hope you enjoy hearing about the collaborations and the impact these stations facilitate for the benefit of the agri-food sector in ontario hi everyone i'm back so before we hear from our first live speaker i'm going to provide a brief overview on the background of the aquaculture research center the ontario aquaculture research center was first established in 1993 by omafra and the university of guelph to assist the commercial fish farming industry in ontario most of you probably know it as it was previously known as the alma aquaculture research station or aars the center has 2600 square meters of floor space with more than 350 fish rearing units which allow for production and research of a full range of fish from egg to broodstock there are several buildings on the property including but not limited to five wet labs and one of the wet labs is a quarantine facility with a recirculating aquaculture system the center offers quarantine facilities for the controlled importation of exotic species or strains of fish to date the quarantine unit has been used to successfully import and study atlantic salmon nile tilapia lake whitefish and lake sturgeon the research center has also developed arctic char and new strains of spring-spawning rainbow trout for ontario farmers the main focus of research at the facility has always been rainbow trout because this species represents approximately 92 percent of the total volume of seafood products produced by the aquaculture industry in ontario um you'll see here on the slide the primary areas of research and you'll hear our speakers talk about some of these today the aquaculture center houses several types of fish including trout one breeding population reproduces in the spring and one in the fall arctic char this population has been maintained since it was introduced to ontario in the mid 1990s by the university of guelph lake whitefish is a more recent addition and is currently being investigated as an alternative aquaculture species in ontario the research center is trying to create a captive breeding population for this species using wild caught fish from georgian bay which are reared at the facility like sturgeon were brought in from wild collections in northern ontario for research projects coho salmon the research center recently imported the first batch of coho salmon eggs which is also being investigated as an alternative species for culture in ontario not much is known about the kahu salmon rearing so the center staff are looking to learn as much as possible to help the adoption of the species by growers in ontario you can access the list of current research projects ongoing at the facility on the alliance website the link will be provided here on this slide so our first speaker is going to be dr david huben dr huben completed his master's at the university of guelph followed by a phd at the swedish university of agricultural sciences with a focus on yeast as a protein source and impacts on the blood physiology and gut microbiome of farmed rainbow trout and arctic char since then he pursued postdoctoral research at the university of sterling within the institute of aquaculture where he investigated environmental stressors and omega-3 fatty acid requirements of farmed atlantic salmon he has also collaborated on agriculture projects in norway finland france italy and across canada with a range of research on fish farming technologies aquafeeds and pathogen control since june 2020 dr huben has returned to the university of guelph in the department of animal biosciences as an assistant professor of aquaculture to continue the work of newly retired professor rich mokhia he teaches a third year undergraduate course on aquaculture and mentors a growing number of grad students with aquaculture projects he routinely collaborates with feed and fish farming companies as well as government agencies both provincially nationally and internationally so we're going to let david take it away when he's ready thank you rebecca can you see my slide okay yep great um if you hear any noise i apologize it's either my big dog or my two-year-old screaming upstairs um but thanks for having me on and giving me this platform uh to talk about my research and thank you for the um the partnership and also uh kind of putting some light on the ontario agriculture research center which i'll call today so first i want to do a bit of a hat tip to rich machia and michael burke the former manager of the alma research station they've done over 20 years of 28 years of collaborations along with technicians and staff including michael burke neal macbeth and david bevin and so now we have marcia chison who's the new manager of the research station and she's an absolute delight to work with and i'm excited to keep working with her and see what the future holds so alma has done a lot of collaborations with government including omatra of course who funds the facility but also ministries of natural resources environment fisheries and oceans environment canada and the nrc also at the university of guelph there's a lot of different departments involved especially animal biosciences but also also pathobiology with john lumsden integrated biology especially with roy and biomedical with weatherland and food science environmental science and engineering department so it's it's quite a diverse group of researchers we have at alma also universities waterloo laurier mcmaster and fleming college i'll do work at alma and also universities across canada including university of new brunswick british columbia laval and quebec and the freshwater institute in usa there's a lot of industry research from different farmers from maca cage new north and northern tilapia producing a variety of species especially ring trout and rj will talk about his company cedar crest and the hatchery production they've got going on there also there's linen farms and sustainable seafood and then on the nutrition side there's a lot of different companies involved in feeding experiments a couple of big companies creating an eight evos which are across canada and internationally and then at local fish feed producers sharp which is formerly blue water and also works under spectrum and some other feed ingredient suppliers as well so what are benefits of alma for my work there's a lot of educational activities in normal years there's usually a class trip with my aquaculture course but during the covert situation i almost been great at putting together videos and also talking with marcia and different staff virtually there's usually workshops such as getting started in aquaculture and aquaponics there's different training activities such as the fish user training for ethics permits to do research also alma hosts research assistants and technicians and summer students i was one many many years ago in terms of industry collaborations there's huge funding opportunities especially with the agri-food innovation alliance and there's a lot of undergrad and graduate projects including a few of my students who get a little split on them from time to time but are quite happy doing some really fun and cutting edge science my research focus is in four different areas fish husbandry sustainable ingredients nutritional requirements in the microbiome and i look at interplay between all these areas a hot topic right now is using insects and algae and brewer's yeast as a sustainable ingredient for fish feeds to replace fish meal and fish oil but we don't really know the impact on the fish and also the gut microbes and there's increasing literature in this area as well because we're finding out the gut microbiome not only produces fatty acids and vitamins but it also interacts with the fish's immune system and also their brain chemistry and behavior and so we have to look at using these sustainable ingredients but in a healthy way and ensuring their nutrient requirements are met at the same time i'll just talk about four different four different studies i either did in the past at the alma research station or in the future that i plan to do the first was a study comparing membrane filtration to uv which is two different technologies that remove bacteria from recirculation aquaculture systems or ras and so alma is really great because they have three different units where you can kind of plug and play different technologies and test them out i was able to do that side by side in a pilot scale wrasse they had of now tilapia years ago and so we identified different bacteria that can actually be uv tolerant and so this is a problem and so membrane filtration can remove those from the system and so one of those uv tolerant bacteria is flavor bacterium cycrophyllum and that causes cold water bacteria disease which is a problem for research systems as well as net pen operations and i plan to do more research using these research systems especially because they're being renovated this year for more temperature control and to update the different filtration systems in terms of sustainable ingredients we recently did a trial at alma feeding different plants to improve fish gut health alma has over a hundred one meter flow through tanks around 350 liters so it's a great platform to do a lot of different research and the idea is to replace or reduce the reliance on fish meal and fish oil but at the same time make sure that gut health's intact and make sure they're they're meeting the needs of of their growth and reproduction in terms of insects yeast and microalgae i've got future plans to test those out as sustainable ingredients in aqua feeds in relation to nutritional requirements and there's a one new farm of lake whitefish in manitoulin island with jeff jeff turk and ron serbert and so it's a new species farmed in ontario and there's high demand by both the fish markets across canada but also in the first nations communities that rely on this fish and so the native stocks the wild stocks have collapsed and so fish farming is a one way to meet the demand from people wanting to eat this delicious fish but on the other side it's a new species so we don't really have a good idea of what to feed them and so we have a study plan for the summer with a master's student that will look at optimizing feed and producing feeds at the animal biosciences department and we're also looking to develop a feed extruder for more feed nutrition trials at illinois they have bigger tanks two meter tanks as well 1500 liters that are perfect for this and so it's a native species and we're looking at increasing its production so that'll definitely help out the industry and some future plans i my library wants to look at omega-3 requirements as as well as other nutrient essential nutrients kind of the one of the last ones got microbiome so we're just funded by the agri-food innovation alliance so thank you for that which is very exciting and and we're going to next year look at pre and probiotics and insects and their effects on the fish gut microbiome and immune response and so we're going to look at different life stages of fish from fry fingerling up to juvenile fish so we need a different array a whole array of different tank sizes so almost perfect for that and we really want to improve the fish health and growth using these different feed additives and i also have other things in the pipeline looking at antimicrobial resistance as well as comparing that microbiomes between wild and farm fish and i've got a phd student coming late next year too to look at that so how is this research benefiting the agriculture industry well we want to improve the performance of both net pens and recirculation systems replace fish meal and fish oil to be more sustainable we want to optimize fish growth and feeding through their nutrition and also increase their fish health and resilience through the microbiome so take home messages have you completely blanked during that and sorry i think you heard my dog for a bit barking but the ontario aquaculture research center at alma supports my work in many ways from teaching to research we really want to use alma and i think it's a great place for improving the growth and resilience and sustainable sustainability of the aquaculture industry through research training and education so i just wanted to thank the ontario agri-food alliance innovation alliance and also mafra for hearing about all the fun science we have going on at the university of guelph and at the yama station so here's my contact information and please reach out to me if you want to do a project either if you're a student or a researcher or from industry please go ahead and contact me thank you very much thank you david thank you very much for that presentation so hopefully everybody's still with us so now we're going to get ready to welcome our second speaker our second speaker is rj taylor and rj is a second generation fish farmer rj and his sister arlen own four land-based farms and a processing facility in gray county they are the largest supplier of juvenile fish to ontario's net pen farmers in northern ontario here in the south they process and deliver fish to over a thousand homes every month you may have seen them on facebook as spring hills fish rj is also the managing director for the ontario aquaculture association and is on the advisory group for alma for minister ernie hardiman and whenever you're ready rj you can go right ahead perfect thank you very much rebecca can you see my screen there yep okay awesome so thank you um uh rebecca um for inviting me to to participate today i was asked to chat a little bit about um alma and the history of the relationship between alma and and industry as fish farmers um but before i do that um i thought i would actually talk about this guy um who you see on the screen right now is uh my dad so my dad jim taylor has actually been in the aquaculture sector here in ontario for over 50 years he um as well as um dr richbokia and we saw michael burke earlier were integral pillars for setting up ontario's fish farming industry and we're very very very thankful to them um but a fun fact before i dove in was that my dad actually partnered with a few other partners to build creek bank trail farm in the 1980s that later sold to the university of guelph to become the alma aquaculture research center and now the ontario aquaculture research center so even on my way here this morning i was hearing stories from my mom about being eight months pregnant with my sister and having to hang great fish at creek bank um and then even after my sister was born they they lived on site there for a bit so lots of family history there so i'm really excited to be able to dive into a little bit of that today so before i uh talk about that i'll take you on a little bit of a a tour um as quickly as i can so um thanks to to people like my dad we have this sector today so this is a map showing roughly what the commercial fish farming sector is in ontario um dotted all over the province um including in the the far west but i wanted to focus in on this map and although it is all over ontario it's concentrated into three main areas that's uh that's a quick look at our sector across the province um but if we zoom in on on our farm um cedar crest trout farm or sometimes we go by by spring hills fish um we're a second generation farming business it's my sister arlen and i now um we have four land-based trout farms um and a processing facility uh we have about 14 full-time staff and nine part-time we kind of operate on on two different sides of the the agri-food sector we're the largest supplier fingerlings to the net pen sector which supplies a lot of the sort of mass and large retailers but then we also close to home have our own small processing facility where we're growing rainbow trout arctic jar and coho salmon and we're dropping it off at about a thousand door stops every month uh that's something new that we started since cobit so so quick little look because i know everyone's joining from their computers at home this is a typical farm of ours you see concrete raceways like that you see indoor troughs you can see some of the the fingerlings the little guys moving around there uh these are the three species uh that we farm when they get a little bit older um this is our breeding program so we hatch about eight million um rainbow trout eggs a year um some go to row some go to the bait market but the lion's share grow right here in ontario and then the last bit about us is the family business part so this is um we are not alone in being a family business but um cedar crest and the the farming operation that we have um is like many of ontario's fish farms we're a small mid-sized company entirely family owned often family operated um even in the core teams but the the reason why i wanted to to focus on this today is that the the role that alma or the ontario aquaculture research station plays is that although aquaculture is a fast-growing emergent aggressive sector and of all of the agri-food sectors it's often cited as the one with the most growth potential and the most gross potential without having to offset another another part of the agri-food sector um it still is uh owned by small and mid-sized companies and these companies don't have a lot of that we don't have r d departments or significant research budgets um or even enough of our capacity that we can take offline to try out different things and that's why alma has always played a very very significant role in the generation of our in the evolution of our sector for decades so from uh from a fish farmer perspective i wanted to to chat about really the ways that the ontario aquaculture research station um support us farmers so in the eyes of a business owner um we we deal with a lot of short-term problems and long-term problems the short term are the questions that uh i'm asking myself like how are we going to make it through the season something's changed uh something's new there's a new problem um and then there are the longer term problems that where i'm asking myself how am i going to continue to be able to pay my employees like in three years for four years or five years those far-reaching things and often when you see a lot of grant programs or r d funding or you want to work with a researcher um it's a very formal process and it can take that sort of six to 12 months to get a research project going so that's where um we've closely worked with alma on these sort of more long-term projects and those are looking towards those sort of three-year how how am i going to adapt to big changes in the market how am i going to keep optimizing how am i going to grow how am i going to compete with those in canada and especially those import markets um and so there's a there's been a big relationship there with alma but then there's all sorts of little things that always come up when you're a farmer which are those short and those seasonal things it's like oh no um i hear that we want to try out a different medication or we want to try out a different feed ingredient or there's something new on the market or all of a sudden this showed up in my water and i don't know what to do or huh this weird thing popped up in my genetics and that is really where um we find a significant value from having alma exist and i can get into that on the next slide um as i said um it really does provide the necessary capacity that our small and mid-sized farming businesses don't have and then it also really supports market development one story i can share on that was up until the start of covid we farmed exclusively rainbow trout um but with the dawn of covid we saw a huge disruption in the agri-food sector it was harder to get fish from elsewhere um people were much more interested in local supply and also a lot of fish from the restaurant market just flooded into to the regular grocery and retail and so us as a farming operation we needed to move pretty quickly to adapt and to survive and so that's when we opened our own processing plant and we started filling rainbow trail as fast as we could um and and delivering it to homes but um what happened very quickly is people started saying do you have any other types of fish do you have any other types of fish um and alma actually kept an architectural breeding population going um for almost a decade when no other ontario farmers were growing arctic char which meant that when the market sort of said what other local fish do you have um we could almost turn on the taps and we had this huge supply of arctic char not only that but we had the knowledge for how to grow it so that we could start growing it ourselves and get it out to market so they almost plays a big role in terms of market development and adaptation the last one um is is really it is a hub for community building in the province um fish farming isn't like a lot of other agri-food sectors we don't have neighbors that also fish farm the other fish farmers are you know um tens if not hundreds of kilometers away and so we rely on things like the the research center um to kind of bring us together so they actually have a an introduction to aquaculture and aquaponics uh seminar that they do which brings a lot of people into the aquaculture to fold but then there are future seminars and future knowledge dissemination and every time there's sort of a new technology demonstration it brings all of our community together and allows us to share knowledge so so some of the things we have ongoing right now when it comes to breeding um is here at cedar crest we have the largest rainbow trout breeding population um in central canada but that that's great to celebrate but it also means that there's really no one else at our level that we can call and talk through breeding because some of the other aquaculture companies are growing different species at entirely different scales and so alma has played a very very significant role in just essentially kind of being that that that point of contact to to bounce identity above to share genetics to try out different things um and continue sort of improving what we're doing i already talked about the arctic char breeding program which has become sort of essential now we're growing it now there are a few other land-based farms growing it and now we have this this new market um here um lake whitefish is another some it is another fish with very exciting prospects um and i i should say here too that fish farming is a little different than some of the other agri-food sectors in just the sheer volume of species that we grow and and although i would love to say that a trout to a jar to a lake white fish is like you know a broiler chicken to uh to uh to a root like a like an egg producing chicken or a meat chicken in reality sometimes they're as different as like a cow to a pig to a chicken and so with with alma having all of this knowledge of of how to how to grow trout and arctic char we saw nile tilapia we saw like white fish we saw them trying out the coho salmon trials um being the sort of focal point for for for this cross species um or not cross species but um helping farmers grow these different species um is really really essential to us so so um looking quickly at the the diet and nutrition here um on the sort of short-term um side of things um we're doing um like a flesh color comparison now so we know that in the large scheme that that there can be orange fish in the market that the market only wants a very specific pie and we don't have the tools necessarily to do the calorometer and to to do the tests but we partnered with alma to make sure that um the different feeds and different ingredients weren't necessarily messing with the flesh color um we're always doing feed trials it seems um and and sometimes they hear well do we need these research centers because you know our our multi-billion dollar feed companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on feed research every year and the answer is a definitive yes because often when private industry does research and development in those types of things they're looking at a very very very specific parameter it might be growth for instance um but as as professor oyvan talked about by by introducing something new it could have repercussions elsewhere and so the uh ontario agriculture research center is look taking that very holistic view so often when we hear of a new feed ingredient could be a prebiotic could be something like a humid carbon could be black soldier fly larvae we hear from the companies that that they have all of these growth claims but when we actually have the ability to to very quickly put together a trial at alma and very quickly see some results out of it that gives us farmers the reassurance that um we could try those at our own farm without potentially devastating um consequences um on the technology scheme we're seeing a new code of practice come in for farmed fish and so that that's going to mean some technology changes phased phased-in technology uh changes over the next few years um at ontario fish farms well why would all of our fish farms look at different technologies and and try them out when we have a place like alma that can try out a few different technologies share what they've learned and then actually host demonstrations of different technologies bring all the farmers together see how they're working get them comfortable with it those are the types of things that don't necessarily they don't show up necessarily in grant applications but they are invaluable to us as farmers um another one are ultrasound trials this one's in in progress but you know we hear that chile trout farms are using ultrasound to look at the gonads of of trout um and we could fly up a team from chile and try and make that happen but um the alma is this gateway to all of these experts that may be using ultrasound in other fields that they can call and perhaps bring in um and then we can be learning and doing that ourselves so that's that's the type of thing um alma also plays a very significant role in the entire ontario animal health network um in sort of surveillance and mitigation techniques for like pathogenic bacteria so some of the sort of common endemic diseases um or emerging diseases that come up um and also they because of the the way that the center is set up having all of these different tanks they have very quick ability to um test things like new medications or new treatments um one for instance is we we use um some sometimes we use formaldehyde on the eggs to get rid of fungus we don't particularly like using that chemical and so with in partnership with alma we're able to quickly test um a few different types of alternatives maybe parasitic acid maybe humid carbon and very quickly get some feedback in like two or three or four months um about what's working so that we can make decisions um as farmers so um we talked a little bit about new species like the coho salmon and the white fish so often um and and often fish farmers we love trying new things um as soon as we sort of conquer something we always want to try a new species or a new way of farming or a new technology but sometimes we're the only ones that want to try that so we're trying coho salmon at our farm right now but what we do is we bring in the eggs and then we send a small bit of them to alma and then what alma experiences in growing them we compare with is that what's happening at our farm and then we can kind of quickly identify um if something that's happening is specific to our farm or specific to the species or specific to that a particular strain of trout for instance so um it it really does provide value that way um another one in terms of sector development is advocacy within government so sometimes as an industry association or as a farmer it can be really difficult to get our voice heard um within even omafra but across the inter government um but alma and folks like uh dr marcia schazon and professor oyman are are seen as as experts in their field and so when they can corroborate some of the things that we're seeing or were collaborating on different tests they can be a little bit of the industry advocacy voice in government um and and we're always so so so grateful for that um and then there's just ongoing capacity building if alma's trying something new um the doors are always open and farmers are always going through and seeing how it's working and hearing how things are going there's so much staff training or even research reviews on something learning aids and hands-on learning so i realized i'm taking a little bit of time um i know we've talked a little bit about some of the previous collaborations over the last three years but they focus a lot on those areas of breeding and diet technology therapeutics and then just um building building the sector up so thank you for listening to me um and i'm happy to send the screen over to you rebecca so i want to thank everybody for coming and this is our final um webinar of our four um our four-part series so i want to thank rj and david for participating today your presentations were very interesting and we had a lot of good questions there so if anybody has any questions for me or for the speakers you can contact me at my email there below otherwise we thank you very much for coming and have a great day
2021-04-12