Climate Action Genomics Initiative Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Systems

Ontario Genomics is pleased to announce that Genome Canada has launched the Climate Action Genomics Initiative.
Climate change poses a significant risk to our agricultural systems, impacting the availability of food and other vital resources, from fuels to the raw materials used to develop everyday products. In response to this major challenge, Genome Canada’s latest large-scale genomics initiative supports climate change mitigation, and adaptation that leads to mitigation, through strategic investments in climate-smart agriculture and food systems.

The new opportunity, called the Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Systems initiative, is investing $30 million in cutting-edge genomics research and innovation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the carbon footprint of Canada’s food production systems—building their resiliency, environmental sustainability and economic viability.

A distinguishing feature of the Initiative is that it will fund a portfolio of interdisciplinary projects and helps coordinate and connect their efforts with cross-cutting programs for knowledge mobilization, data coordination and implementation across Canada. This portfolio approach allows benefits from one solution to translate into other food production systems or supply chains and cascade impact throughout the broader food system.

The Initiative will deploy a number of funding opportunities that will make up the portfolio.

At the outset, these will include: