2026 JOHN OGILVIE RESEARCH INNOVATION AWARD
“Sustainable Approaches for Upcycling of Industrial Pea-Starch Waste into Nanomaterials for Potential Agricultural and Food Applications”
Canada is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of pulses, with pulse exports valued at approximately $3 billion in 2024. While this export strength has traditionally been built on raw pulse commodities, Canada has a major opportunity to expand further into higher-value plant-protein ingredients and food applications. Realizing this opportunity requires rapid, reliable, and evidence-based tools for assessing protein quality, particularly amino acid composition. However, current amino acid and protein-quality testing methods are often slow, costly, destructive, and difficult to apply in high-throughput quality-control settings.
To address this need, a multidisciplinary collaborative research project was carried out from 2022 to 2026, bringing together researchers from the Department of Biosystems Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Manitoba, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Winnipeg, and the National Research Council Canada (NRC). The project focused on evaluating protein quality using protein extracted from field peas (Pisum sativum), a crop central to Canada’s pulse-protein isolate industry. The team, consisting of engineers, chemists, plant breeders, and computer scientists, has developed an integrated platform combining microfluidic lab-on-a-chip sample preparation, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), bicinchoninic acid assay (BCA), UV-visible spectroscopy, and artificial intelligence-based spectral modelling.
This seminal initiative encompassing two large projects received funding from the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers, Mitacs, NSERC, and NRC, securing $1.8 million over a six-year period. The project has so far resulted in six journal manuscripts, including two published papers, one accepted paper, one manuscript submitted as a revised version following peer review, one manuscript with revisions in preparation for resubmission, and one submitted manuscript, as well as three conference presentations/posters and one invention disclosure currently in process. It has also trained 13 highly qualified personnel, including 7 postdoctoral fellows/research associates, 2 graduate students, and 4 undergraduate students, across engineering, spectroscopy, microfluidics, artificial intelligence, and food/protein analysis.
By demonstrating reliable and rapid cysteine prediction in pea protein using a low-cost, non-destructive microfluidic-SERS-AI platform, the project advances a practical analytical approach for next-generation protein-quality assessment. Its outcomes are relevant to pulse breeding, protein ingredient quality control, and value-added growth in Canada’s plant-protein sector. Some of the highly qualified personnel (HQP) trained through this initiative have progressed to careers in industry and academia, while others remain engaged in the research. The success of our HQP demonstrates the project’s role in building interdisciplinary talent and supporting Canada’s value-added plant-protein sector.
