Summerland Research and Development Centre

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

4200 Highway #97, South
Summerland, British Columbia
V0H 1Z0

Telephone: 250-494-7711

Email: aafc.summerlandrdc-crdsummerland.aac@canada.ca

Latitude: 49.566458
Longitude: −119.635986

The Summerland Research and Development Centre was established in 1914, in the heart of the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, and is geographically located in a semi-arid eco-zone that is Canada’s most water challenged and yet most biologically diverse eco-region.

Research at the Centre is focused on building resilient and profitable horticultural production systems. The relatively mild climate in southern BC allows the production of high-value tender fruit crops (tree fruits, grapes, berries) that cannot be grown in most regions of the country. The Centre is in an ecologically sensitive location and surrounded by urban development. The unique setting and limited water supply inspires researchers at the Centre to focus on sustainable crop production practices to help preserve and enhance the resilience of such sensitive environments within and across Canada.

Summerland Research and Development Centre is a Minor Use Pesticides Program site which conducts research trials on potential solutions to grower-identified pest problems.

The Canadian Plant Virus Collection, part of a nationally mandated program, which consists of freeze-dried and “live” viruses maintained in perennial plants, is located at the Summerland Research and Development Centre.

Facilities at the Summerland Research and Development Centre

• 320 hectare site, with approximately 90 irrigated hectares planted to various tree fruits and wine grapes
• Isolated virus orchard
• Separate orchard and vineyard dedicated to entomological and disease research
• Three research greenhouses, many controlled environment growth chambers and cold storage rooms
• Research scale controlled atmosphere facility
• Cold hardiness testing laboratory
• Food research, and extraction and fractionation laboratory pilot plant
• Sensory evaluation laboratory
• Standard and level II containment microbiology laboratories
• Advanced microscopy facility with scanning, transmission and confocal capability
• Small lot winery
• Molecular laboratories with advanced molecular analytical capacity including real-time and droplet-digital PCR and regular and next-generation DNA sequencing
• Geographic Information System (GIS) laboratories
• Insect rearing rooms
• Drainage lysimeter
• Large plant pathogen (fungal and bacterial) collection
• Canadian Plant Virus Collection
• Ornamental Gardens

Current research activities

Improving the sector’s capacity to resist climate change and other stresses to our physical environment

• Develop state-of-the-art, high resolution digital soil and climate maps for major agricultural regions of British Columbia (B.C.)
• Develop geo-referenced models to assess and predict climate change’s effects on: water supply and demand; greenhouse gas emissions; soil carbon sequestration; soil biodiversity; pest distribution and ecology; and crop distribution with consideration of their vulnerability to environmental risks (For example, winter injury)
• Assist domestic and international marketing efforts by developing carbon and water footprints and life-cycle analyses for wine grape and tree fruit production systems and value chains
• Develop regional models to determine ecological goods and services associated with farmland ecosystems
• Evaluate the effects of and improve the understanding of relationships among soil, nutrient, water and groundcover vegetation management practices on soil health, biodiversity and overall resilience of orchards and vineyards
• Develop new knowledge of relationships between cover crops, amendments, mulches, soil biology, root-soil-water relations and fruit quality, and how environmental variation influences these variables
• Develop integrated management practices that reduce nutrient deficiencies, optimize water stress, and improve fruit quality while minimizing use of water and synthetic fertilizer and losses of nitrogen and phosphorus to the environment
• Enhance knowledge of the impacts and ecology of soil-borne pests and pathogens that affect the resilience of farmland and lead to new strategies to assess biological indicators of soil health
• Develop integrated pre-plant soil management practices to suppress the activity of soil-borne pests while optimizing soil fertility, water availability, root-microbe symbioses and early growth of perennial fruit crops
• Identify wine grape and fruit tree rootstocks that resist/tolerate pests in soils, use water or nutrients more efficiently, and produce better quality fruit

Improving the sector’s ability to respond to diseases, viruses, and other biological threats

• Identify and develop biocontrol agents (predators, parasitoids, viruses, bacteria, nematodes and fungi) for major pests of crops in the region and across Canada
• Assess the distributions, population dynamics and damage potential of nematode pests on the rise in western Canada
• Develop management strategies that use reduced risk chemicals or non-chemical alternatives to control important pest insects such as cherry fruit flies, spotted wing drosophila, apple maggot, apple clearwing moth, leafhoppers, mealy bugs and scale insects
• Develop area-wide control strategies (For example, sterile insects, pheromone mating disruption) and monitoring processes for tree fruit crops to be included in new protocols for export markets
• Identify what determines overwinter survival, spread and population growth of new invasive pests such as spotted wing drosophila, brown marmorated stink bug, and apple maggot
• Maintain and continue to expand the Canadian plant virus collection as a national and international resource
• Provide national and regional responses to emerging crises caused by viruses, fungal and bacterial pathogens, in particular those affecting high-value horticultural crops
• Discover, characterize and identify viral, fungal and bacterial pathogens of grapevine, fruit trees or small fruits and develop diagnostic tools to detect them
• Continue development and implementation of effective field and post-harvest management strategies to control and lessen the impact of fungal, bacterial and virus diseases on plant health
• Provide new insights into the molecular biology of plant viruses, and evaluate the potential of host proteins as targets for antiviral strategies
• Develop management strategies to eliminate leafroll and red blotch virus diseases in grapevines
• Continue to generate genomic resources for several important fungal and bacterial pathogens to reveal population shifts and lead to the development of new strategies to combat diseases such as apple scab and fireblight

Supporting opportunities to grow agriculture’s contributions to the economy and society

• Incorporate the use of molecular markers to select potential tree fruit cultivars with desirable traits
• Generate new apple and cherry cultivars that meet consumer preference, have market appeal and are adapted to local growing conditions
• Develop new tools and approaches for “real-time” monitoring of microenvironments and crops’ relationships with water
• Optimize grapevine management and tree fruit thinning techniques that allow growers to adjust to unusual environmental conditions
• Develop novel production practices that minimize overall vineyard and orchard water use while optimizing fruit yields and quality and the risks of damage from winter freeze and spring frosts
• Develop applied GIS tools to improve terroir characterization, landscape models, and models of vineyard climates for air drainage management
• Enhance management strategies to control diseases that can develop in crops after harvest
• Develop strategies for optimized treatments after harvest and during storage and packaging to support long distance transportation of high value products and enhance access to international markets
• Continue to detect, identify and characterize bioactive compounds in fruit and fruit products, and improve the understanding of the biochemistry of fruit and wine quality
• Modify production and processing practices to minimize risks of contamination with human pathogens such as E. coli
• Develop sensitive molecular techniques and genomics to detect, track and characterize human pathogens in food and crop systems

Results of our research

Improving the sector’s capacity to weather stress from climate, weather, and other physical challenges

• Developed a BC Water Demand Model for regional water supply and demand which has been applied in approximately 30 BC communities in BC and will assist in assuring agricultural water supply is maintained in the future
• Developed industry-adopted management techniques and rootstock selection that minimize risks of winter damage associated with climate variability in grapevines and rootstocks
• Developed new methods for using organic soil amendments and mulches to moderate water stress, provide nutrients and enhance replant establishment
• Developed high-frequency or pulsed irrigation to conserve water while optimizing the growth of fruit trees and grapevines and the quality of fruit and wine
• Produced improved guidelines for tree fruit and wine grape fertilization strategies using application of nitrogen and phosphorus during irrigation
• Developed best management practices to improve ground water quality in the Sumas-Abbotsford aquifer by reducing nitrate leaching from raspberry fields
• Helped to develop Sustainable Winegrowing BC, a program which provides grower training and assessment to promote the sustainable production of high quality wine grapes in BC

Improving the sector’s capacity to weather stress from pests, viruses, and other biological risks

• Collaborated with industry and local governments to create a strategy for the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys to reduce codling moth, apple clearwing moth, and other pests, while reducing the use of insecticide in commercial apple and pear orchards
• Developed a new approach using a geographic information system that led to the early detection of apple maggot in BC’s interior fruit-growing region
• Helped the wine grape industry to reduce pesticide use by demonstrating that using shepherd’s purse in vine rows controls climbing cutworms, and increasing the abundance of flowering plants and overall vineyard plant diversity increases beneficial insects and mites
• Licensed a simple and accurate diagnostic test for plum pox virus, and developed a rapid and sensitive diagnostic test for strawberry mild yellow edge virus
• Characterized viruses associated with strawberry decline disease in Eastern Canada (strawberry mottle virus, strawberry mild yellow edge virus, and strawberry polerovirus 1)
• Gained new insights into wheat rust, which led to the development of a gene silencing technology as a way for wheat to resist infection
• Discovered and characterized over 40 fungi and viruses causing grapevine and tree fruit dieback in British Columbia and Nova Scotia
• Developed a new, fast molecular diagnostic tool with capacity to detect and identify 70 different fungi in grapevines and fruit trees
• Developed a new mathematical model that predicts the fate of Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli) on field lettuce
• Released new apple cultivars such as Aurora Golden Gala in collaboration with Summerland Varieties Corporation

Supporting opportunities to grow agriculture’s contributions to the economy and society

• Supported the expansion of the sweet cherry industry through the development of new high-quality cultivars which ripen later in the season and are in high demand in international markets
• Developed new fruit handling processes from harvest through shipping for BC cherries, which enabled cost-effective shipment by sea to more international markets
• DNA fingerprinting has led to accurate identification of cultivars from the apple and sweet cherry breeding programs and supported protecting plant breeders’ rights
• Developed new drip irrigation strategies that conserve water while enhancing fruit quality and techniques for managing grapevine canopies that enhance the quality and value of both red and white wines
• Supported the development of sub-appellations for the BC wine industry through the application of GIS tools, novel climate monitoring techniques, and wine sensory studies to characterize terroir
• Supported exports of sweet cherries to Asia and Europe by developing new monitoring processes and reduced risk insecticides for cherry fruit flies
• Contributed to registering many new pesticides for tree fruits, grapes, as well as field and greenhouse crops, which supports harmonizing regulations with Canada’s export markets