what are we looking at right now so this is onions onions okay
so here we have various treatments that we'll be applying to the crop to control a disease
so we have different we have six different treatments uh oh in this plot in this plot here
so we'll be putting different uh chemicals on them to control a disease called downy mildew of onions
wow and is that a large problem in this area it's not a large problem but it's very devastating if
it comes so we use the we use the weather station and things like that equipment to help predict
um disease development or if it diseases what the parameters are that it could become a problem
later on um the problem with downy mildew of onions is when it'll infect the onion
and you won't see it until two weeks later until it sporulates and comes back before it's too late
before it's too late yeah so you need to put on a preventative fungicide application to prevent that
from happening wow and is the main research you conduct here for the Holland Marsh area
because that's the type of soil you're researching in yes but it would be applicable to other places
that grew onions or carrots if you had that problem the forecasting system or the products
that are registered would control that disease as well and what are the main crops grown in the
Holland Marsh so the main crops that are grown are carrots and onions that probably makes up about 80
percent of the really acreage wow and people are really looking for local fresh ingredients and
and this is where most of toronto gets them from yes we we provide uh most of the vegetables are
most of the carrots and onions that are that are consumed in Ontario are grown in this area
that's amazing so is this a root of an onion so that's this is the actual onion here so there
are the roots and this will would turn into the bulb so we grow what they call long day
cooking onions oh okay wow and is that the variety no that's the type of onion type of
so there's different long day onions in texas in georgia they grow what they call short day onions
okay so these want the long days so we've just passed the summer solstice so we had almost 15
hours of sunlight or daylight and that's what makes these develops these onions develop bulbs
that's really interesting and what variety do you have planted here this is a variety called
catskill which is a relatively new variety what we try to do is grow varieties that
growers are growing as well in the area we want to use something that they may
use in the future or we're currently using and would you ever do a plot the same year that's
both onions but different varieties to see how on the application of what you're trying affects
them differently so part of the work that we do is we have a trial over there that has 35 different
varieties of onions really i had no idea there were that many varieties yes there's probably
more than that but what we're trying to do with that is try to find onions that are suited
to growing here they might be developed for a different region or a region farther south
most of the onions are developed in the United States so we're trying to find onions and carrot
varieties that will work for our growers in this region here that is very cool and so what is the
station setup you have here these here that we're looking at are different types of spore traps
if we were on the back side of them but they face into the wind but if we look there's a tiny hole
and that is connected to a motor that's drawing in air and then what it's doing is collecting
that air sample into a little vial that we can then look at and use pcr technology to
help identify spores that are microscopic that we can then predict whether there's actually disease
in the air that could potentially infect the crop so this is a similar unit here has the same setup
but it runs on a tape that runs for seven days oh wow every few minutes the tape moves so you have
over a period of time you can tell if spores are active at night or during the morning hours
things like that so and then we also use this weather station here to help with our disease
forecasting system so we have a rain gauge we have leaf wetness sensors we have temperature sensors
throughout the crop that we can use to help um in disease prediction models that is just fascinating
i had no idea how much goes into research yes so this is connected to the wi-fi in our building
wow really yes and we also have ones that are connected they have a cellular program so we
can download the information uh remotely that is so cool yes very interesting and how many
acres do you have for research land here so we have about nine acres which doesn't sound very
much we might be the smallest Research Station in Canada um but you do a lot with that but we do a
lot with that nine acres so we also rent a small piece of land um from a grower down the road and
we also do research in growers fields depending on if there's a problem in their field that we don't
have here at the research station we can conduct the research at their at their farm are growers in
Ontario able to contact you to potentially help work with research yes so we we'd like to work
with as many carrot and onion growers as possible to try find solutions for their problems oh my
goodness so these are red onions wow so these will grow to be bulb red onions similar to what the
yellow cooking onions that we saw earlier are so amazing i've never seen onions in a field before
and how far along are these onions so these onions would be just about half
grown okay maybe a little bit less than that so when onions are mature they'll fall over
really so once you have a bulb they'll bring they'll start taking the nutrients from the
top of the leaves the neck will become soft and the leaf and the plant will follow and
that's how you know they're ready and that's how you know they're going to be ready to harvest
and harvest you just pull them out harvest we lift them out of the ground
so we'll lift out one bed at a time and then put them into a windrow let the tops dry completely
down and then come and take the pops off and put them into those wooden pallets oh okay
and then they're stored for sale in barn such as that across the road now what is this right here
so these are irrigation pipes wow and do these run through all of your fields so we usually we have
enough pipes to put into all of our trial areas and you usually have to irrigate it all depends
on the year yes we hope not to but generally every year we end up irrigating some of our crops
would it be usual for onion and carrot growers to irrigate their fields or just depends on the
farm and operation in our area it depends on the farm and operation and depends on the weather
like everything so we used to not irrigate very much people have invested in irrigation as an
insurance policy when it doesn't rain in order to ensure they have a good crop at harvest and that
makes sense as cranberry growers invested fees to come as an insurance policy also to produce
a better barrier yes so these we use a sprinkler type system that would sit like we can look at one
in here that's already set up but these have sort of been taken out um because we're trying to run
the robot in here do you ever have to tile your fuels so most of the fields here are tile drained
in order to ensure that the water can get away from the crop and would that be common for Ontario
people mostly will invest in in of tiling um of carrot and onion valves just because of
high value crop so it's worthwhile in the long run to invest in tiling and how do you measure
carrots and onions it wouldn't be by bushel would it be five pounds we measured by bushels oh really
we try to yep everything is harvested in bushels per acre and how many bushels would a plot so in
not a plot but a grower would try with for a 1000 bushels an acre okay of a harvest that's quite a
lot that is a lot but there's a lot of money that goes into that as well so yes and you have to be
able to make that return yes and carrots would probably get about 1500 bushels an acre would be a
a reasonable yield or higher in terms of the amount of value that there is in that okay wow
and well i suppose since they're much larger crops your bushel comes a lot faster also yes it can
that's the idea that's where you're making money when the bushels come fast that's
when you're going to make your money then small wheat kernels that's right yes except
we're only growing hundreds acres of carrots we're not growing thousands of acres of wheat
true i guess it would be relative yes for sure so what robot would this be and and what is it doing
so this is the Nexus Goat and what it's doing is mapping the field in order to
later come back and then pick weeds so right now it's taking images and once the images
are processed then it'll come back and it all has three robotic arms that will pick the weeds
that is very cool and eventually would this robot be able to operate without a person here
yes the idea is that it would operate without a person here um someone could watch it remotely uh
through the camera systems and stop it if anything were to go wrong that's amazing
it's turning slightly on its own to make sure that it's maintaining that straight line and how
long do you think that it will be until farmers are able to implement this as a a practice in
their operation so this is in the late stages of prototype development but there are other robots
from other companies that are that are being used uh in different parts of the world and it's only a
matter of time before they're adopted to Ontario agriculture i believe that is very interesting
thank you you're welcome so this is what the irrigation pipe would look like in the field
yes this is set up um in case it doesn't rain for several weeks then we have the ability uh to put
the irrigation on we have an underground system that comes from the canal at the far end on a pump
that we can turn on put sprinklers in and then we can put on as much irrigation as we want very cool
here we have a plot that we're going to grow canola on that we're looking at controlling a
disease called club root which affects the roots and makes the crop unmarketable the idea behind
adding the calcium which is the white areas that you see here is to raise the soil ph above seven
and that will help to limit the amount of disease that that shows up so we're trying to use
an unconventional we're trying to use a fertility program to help control the disease this is part
of a graduate studies master's degree that's amazing and would you have graduate students
from just the University of Guelph or yeah we we all work for a professor at the University
and they're all part of her Graduate Program thank you so much for watching today's video
and thank you for giving me a tour of what you do here it's truly remarkable thank you for coming
we're glad to have you kate and if you're interested all of our research is summarized
in our Muck Vegetable Cultivar and Research Report which is put out
and is also available on our website which is in the link below i believe
wow that is very cool i will definitely be taking a look at this all right thank you make sure to
like and subscribe to learn more about how your food gets to your table thank you bye