Mark Lefsrud grows radishes in concrete. Not only because it’s his research mission to grow food locally in novel ways but also because he believes in the power of plants to bring people together.
“Part of the work that we do is trying to create that nexus between community and food,” he says.
It all starts in Lefsrud’s Biomass Production Laboratory at Macdonald Campus, where the Bioresource Engineering professor oversees around 20 graduate students at any given time.
With the research led by the students, the lab focuses on new ways to grow plants, and mechanisms for improving plant production in controlled environments.
That includes figuring out how to improve energy efficiency in greenhouses and other growing environments, mainly through lighting and heating.
“We’re trying to improve the environment so that we can allow all plants to thrive,” says Lefsrud.
That necessitates careful and intricate monitoring of the plants: “We’ll change one variable – a light source, a wavelength of light – and see how the plants behave under those conditions.”
Hyper local
Lefsrud works with several companies to get plants growing in new environments.
One of them is Gardyn, which makes small-scale indoor plant growth systems, benchtops or countertops, for example in a kitchen, to grow lettuce or leafy greens.
Another partnership is with two companies in the concrete industry, Cemex and Innovertech, to puzzle out larger-scale food production for buildings. They’ve developed a biocompatible substrate, meaning that they can grow plants in concrete.
“It’s porous and we’ve lowered the pH on it. We’ve changed the matrix so that the roots can penetrate into the concrete and grow,” explains Lefsrud.
He says the idea is to make green walls, either as inner or outer façades.
Then as long as there’s a hydroponic system through the wall providing water to the plants, “you can technically start growing whatever you want,” says Lefsrud. One element that remains to be seen is the structural integrity of such walls, since its load-bearing capacity would be less than traditional concrete.
“It could be used for sidewalks, parking lots. One of our pipe dreams is that we could create a golf course out of it.”
He’s excited to see how this research will grow in the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences' planned Smart Agri-Food Hub, for which he’s part of the building design committee.
In addition to improved research and office space, “we’re pushing for industry-cutting incubation centres, and pilot plants for scaling up of testing ideas. … A lot is possible at this point.”
Raising leafy greens – and awareness
A by-product of Lefsrud’s work is that he also raises awareness about the social aspect of growing food locally.
He brings up the example from when he was part of the design team for the plant growth unit at a contract company for NASA. He worked on the system now used to grow lettuce, leafy greens and even a few flowers on the International Space Station.
You can grow the lettuce for human consumption, you can grow it for research, but we find that the psychological and social component becomes very large,” says Lefsrud. “We can supply the astronauts with the nutrients, that’s doable, but it has a stronger benefit as a community organizer as well as for social well-being.”
This applies on Earth as well. “People like going into a greenhouse in the middle of winter,” he says. “So if it’s a green wall inside an atrium of a building, people will hang out there.”
Greenhouses for the north
The social component of his plant research means that he necessarily works with researchers in other disciplines.
Another project Lefsrud leads is a greenhouse for northern Canada. At any given time he has two or three students working on it, and they currently have a prototype. One of his graduate students, Rose Seguin, is up north doing a social evaluation to figure out community understanding and acceptance of the project.
For her work, Seguin works with three advisors: Lefsrud himself, associate professor Treena Wasonti:io Delormier who works in dietetics, and associate professor Jan Adamowski, whose research includes social modeling.
In addition to collaborating with Plant Science, Lefsrud also works with Delormier in the School of Human Nutrition. “Because the food I’m growing has a direct link to them, we’re using them to drive how we make decisions,” says Lefsrud.
The entrepreneurial spirit at Mac
Entrepreneurship is thriving on the Macdonald Campus, and Lefsrud gives the example of one of his master’s students, David Leroux, who also works on the northern greenhouses with Lefsrud. Leroux’s company, Cannafish, won a 2019 award at the Dobson Cup in the category of Innovation Driven Entreprise Track. Cannafish uses fish waste to create a nutrient source for plants.
Given that Lefsrud is his supervisor, it’s not surprising to see what Leroux has accomplished. “I’m an applied researcher, so a lot of the stuff that we do ends up being applicable for industry directly,” says Lefsrud.