For boosting agriculture through research

At first, Richard Ablett’s ideas sound far-fetched.  Harvesting the coelomic fluid of starfish? Reducing the methane in cow flatulence with garlic extract? For the England-born Ablett, 55, these are serious endeavours that could help enhance the region’s strained agriculture and primary resource sectors. As head of the Atlantic BioVenture Centre in Truro, N.S., Ablett is pushing fishing and farming beyond their stagnating roots.

“Faced with global competition, the region’s staple sectors are struggling to compete,” he says. “So local producers must focus on niche or value-added goods.” That means looking differently at resources to find hidden uses. For example, the BioVenture Centre, a division of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, is working with Quebec-based InnoVactiv Inc. to draw value from Maritime starfish. The prickly creatures are known for their powers of regeneration; if a starfish loses its arm, it will grow back within six weeks.

Those regenerative qualities are now being harnessed in development of a patented extract to add to cosmetic skin cream that will be sold around the world. In a partnership with Maritime mussel farmers, the starfish are harvested, and their coelomic fluid is collected and tapped of its ability to help regeneration of sub-dermal tissues. “We’re taking a primitive species that has no economic value and with our Quebec partner finding a valuable market and end use,” says Ablett, who studied in England, Scotland, and the U.S. before establishing Prince Edward Island’s Food Technology Centre in 1987.

Ablett rattles off other examples, such as fermenting barley grain, to enrich the protein yield for use as aquaculture fish feed. Then there’s the cow-flatulence research, which aims to use an anti-microbial garlic extract to help reduce bovine methane production. The idea: to promote East Coast beef and dairy cattle as eco-friendly.

In each case, the goal is to diversify a centuries’ old industry to ensure its future existence. “We’re facing heavy international competition in Canada,” says Ablett, “and agri-producers must climb higher up the tree of knowledge to stay in the game.”