SDG 2: Zero Hunger

The Natural Health and Food Products Research Group (NRG) addresses issues of product quality, process improvement and human health using basic and applied science along with state of the art technology. Their goal is to ensure that all Canadians can achieve the potential health and economic benefits offered by medicinal plants, natural health products and the food industry. Food Technology Students are required to complete an industry project during their final term of study. The NRG research lab serves as a living laboratory for applied student learning where researchers help supervise students in the use of advanced analytical equipment and methodology.

Learn more about the NRG

There is a global effort focused on mitigating the impacts of climate change on agricultural crops, particularly the reduction in yield associated with hotter, drier climates. Researchers and students at BCIT are working on understanding how plants like corn and Setaria with C4-type photosynthesis are more drought tolerant than C3-type plants like rice and wheat.

Dr. Carol Wenzel, researcher and faculty member in BCIT Biotechnology, in collaboration with SFU Biology faculty Dr. Jim Mattsson focuses on how the plant hormone auxin and other genetic factors influence anatomical differences in C3 and C4-type plants. Both researchers are performing genome editing in Setaria with student researchers, including Horton Lai from the Biotechnology co-op program at BCIT/UBC.

Dr. David Holloway, BCIT Mathematics faculty, and Dr. Carol Wenzel, BCIT Biotechnology faculty, had the honour of publishing their research in in silico Plants (Oxford University Press) in 2021. The innovative interdisciplinary work involves the pairing of mathematics and the veins in plant leaves.

Carol has extensive experience in the biology of leaf vein formation, having discovered, among other things, aspects of how plant hormones drive the growth of leaf veins. These veins are necessary for transporting nutrients and keeping plants alive.

Keeping plants alive, especially food plants, has long been a priority for human survival. Now biotechnologists like Carol are able to use various techniques to help understand and manipulate plant growth mechanisms. These innovative techniques can optimize yield for our changing environment, or produce novel products.

The duo are adapting their model for the particular geometry of grasses, which are “monocots”. These monocots include our major cereal crops, a critical part of our food system. Some monocots have distinct leaf anatomical features, like vein arrangement and specialized cell types. These features can make them much more efficient at photosynthesis in hot and dry conditions.

Carol explains: “Understanding the molecular mechanisms associated with photosynthetic efficiency in a grass may enable the development, for example, of wheat and rice that are more robust in a warming world.”

BCIT, in partnership with Simon Fraser University (SFU), Vancouver Island University (VIU), and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) launched the Nourishing Innovation: Campus Nutrition and Food Security Contest in May 2021. Nourishing Innovation is an initiative of the BC Collaborative for Social Infrastructure (BCCSI), a joint project funded by the McConnell Foundation between BCIT, SFU, VIU, and UNBC to advance and scale BC higher education social infrastructure to strengthen communities while sharing knowledge.

The goal of the contest was to develop innovative solutions to enable equitable access to nutritious, sustainable, and culturally sensitive food for all students on campus. The winning ideas were to be implemented at each campus at the start of the fall semester.

“With the generous support from the McConnell Foundation our students can use their collective energies and strengths to make a real sustainable impact on our campuses,” says Hong Sy, Natural Research Analyst, BCIT Natural Health and Foods Products Research Group “Nearly 40% of post-secondary students in Canada experience food insecurity. Our hope with this contest is to empower students’ voices to develop innovative ideas to spark a movement within BCIT to address food security on our campus”.

Congratulations to the BCIT team TattiFood for finishing in 3rd place. View their pitch video below:

The BCIT Student Association (BCITSA) operates a Food Support Hub for all BCIT students to access support. Food insecurity has severe implications for one’s health and well-being. Post-secondary students are particularly vulnerable, with over 50% of students at Canadian post-secondary institutions experiencing moderate to severe levels of food insecurity. These services include several different avenues, including a Food Pantry and Community Fridge where students can access nutritional food items on a drop-in basis.

Students who need immediate food support can access the Food Pantry and Community Fridge on the Burnaby campus. These are free initiatives where members of the BCIT Community can obtain accessible, nutritionally, and culturally appropriate food and personal hygeine products. Both rely on donations from their stakeholders and community partners to provide students with free, healthy food options.

The BCIT community regularly donates to the Food Support Hub. Most recently:

• The BCIT Alumni Association gifted $4,800 to the Food Pantry. This sponsorship equates to $400 in groceries per month, for the year, to help stock the shelves with nutritious food for students.
• Employees held a Fall Food Drive Challenge from November 1-30, 2022 with the collective goal of raising 100 lbs of non-perishable food. From the start, a groundswell of support organically formed and, only days into the challenge, the goal was not only met, but beaten! The challenge expanded to the local community with organizations like Save On Foods also donating.

BCIT officially opened an Indigenous Garden on the Burnaby campus in spring 2022. The garden is a dedicated area to cultivate a range of plants with importance to Indigenous peoples and also provides a peaceful green space for students and staff to enjoy.

The new garden is one of several spaces across campus that are planted with edible plants for staff and students. A traditional Three Sisters companion planting of squash, corn, and beans were established alongside plants used for medicine including sage, sweetgrass and tobacco. In a Three Sisters garden, corn, beans, and squash are planted together to help each other grow:

• Beans — takes nitrogen from the air and uses it to keep the other sisters healthy.
• Corn — grows tall stalks that the beans climb, holding the plants together.
• Squash — grows big leaves that cover the ground acting like a mulch to prevent weeds and retain moisture in the soil.

A traditional Three Sisters’ soup using these ingredients was served at the opening of the garden.

In the fall, Indigenous Initiatives celebrated their Garden Tier’s harvest with the BCIT community.

Read the BCIT News articleView the garden photos

On display in the corner of the BCIT Library on the Burnaby campus is a different collection of information: drawers filled with dozens of varieties of seeds. It offers seeds for flowers, herbs, vegetables, and a number of books to help with every aspect of growing a garden.

Like a traditional library, the seed library lends seeds to its patrons free of charge, but with a goal to create greener spaces, encourage people to grow their own food, and promote local seed diversity. It operates on the honour system and patrons are encouraged to return seeds at the end of the growing season to keep the library well stocked.

Since the seed library opened in 2019, seed have found their way into the soil in gardens around Metro Vancouver and others were tended to on window sills and balconies in homes and in offices.

Read the BCIT News article

BCIT has joined Feed BC – a provincial initiative that aims to increase the use of BC sourced food ingredients across government-supported facilities, programs, and services.

“By sourcing local food ingredients, BCIT is advancing sustainability and contributing to the economic resilience of the food industry,” explains Vince Laxton, Director, Corporate Services, BCIT. “This reflects BCIT’s strength in partnering with government and industry towards the economic development of BC.”

Read the BCIT News article 

The Grounds and Landscaping Team at BCIT have established an honeybee and pollinator program called BeeCIT in partnership with urban beekeepers Alvéole to install and manage the hives. Their goal is to:

“Make people fall in love with bees, build ecological awareness, and in time, more sustainable cities and food systems.”

BCIT landscapers plant edible areas with crops like apples, blueberries, rhubarb, cherry tomatoes, and more. Many of them rely on pollinators to set their fruit. In fact, pollination is essential for about 75% of the food we eat. Campus crops are grown in a healthy way without herbicides or pesticides, and are available for the community to enjoy.

There are 5 beehives on 4 campuses housing around 70,000 bees, which travel thousands of miles across the Lower Mainland each day in search of food. Alvéole provides real-time data on what’s happening at the hives on their website and anyone can sign up for email updates to get the latest information on our bees.

To fulfill an urgent request for meals put out by BC Housing, BCIT and Chartwells staff worked in the BCIT commissary kitchen to quickly prepare, package, and deliver 1,000 meals to those in need within the span of 24 hours. During this challenging time, an increasing number of social services agencies were working to meet food insecurity needs in our community by collaborating with organizations that have food production capability.

BCIT continued to work with Chartwells to offer non-traditional services during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide meals for those in need.

Read the BCIT News Article