2023 Winner: Agriculture / Agrifood Innovation
Winner: Livestock Gentec (Graham Plastow, CEO; John Basarab, Head of Beef Operations)
Presenter: Lorna Baird – Manager, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Olds College of Agriculture & Technology, and co-lead Central Alberta Regional Innovation Network – CARIN
Initiative: Developing and Driving Adoption of Transformative Genomic Technologies for Cattle
Finalist: Sustainability Solutions/ Approaches, Early Adopter of Innovation
Livestock Gentec is a Centre for Applied Research; Commercialization established in 2010 and based at the University of Alberta. Livestock Gentec operates as an integrated research, development and technology pipeline that, while collaborating globally, has the mandate of delivering technology to the beef industry within Canada. With a focus on genomics, Livestock Gentec is working to increase the beef sector’s competitiveness, profitability and sustainability through genetic solutions. This includes better management tools for the sector to increase livestock production efficiency (reduce cost of production while also reducing the environmental footprint), enhance meat quality (add value to a commodity product) and support continual improvement of animal health (increased resiliency to disease and temperature extremes) and food safety (healthy animals produce healthy food for healthy communities). Livestock Gentec collaborates widely across industry and academia to build teams that develop applied genomic solutions and transfer knowledge directly to producers.
