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New Technology Set to Create Higher Crop Yields and More Resilient Plants

By Mary Ryan Howarth

New research done on the plant hormone, salicylic acid, demonstrates how it can improve disease resistance in plants and help tolerate external stressors like extreme temperatures and rapidly changing weather.

Salicylic acid has been used before to repel pests and various pathogens that cause disease, but is known to create issues in crop growth. However this new method separates growth reduction from the defense response in salicylic acid, where the plant can grow and withstand external factors.

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Alberta Honey: A Day at Molenkamp Honey Farms

Video: Alberta Honey: A Day at Molenkamp Honey Farms

When was the last time you read the label on your honey?

We spent a day at Molenkamp Honey Farms with Michael Molenkamp, who has been keeping bees for 17 seasons and runs three to four thousand hives. In mid-September, he was finishing treatments and getting his bees ready for winter, and he walked us through how Alberta honey gets made.

Alberta has just 150 commercial beekeepers running 300,000 colonies, and together they produce 40% of Canada’s honey. Long summer days and golden canola fields give Alberta honey a light flavour that’s hard to match anywhere else.

Molenkamp calls Alberta beekeepers some of the most resilient farmers he knows. There’s plenty of Alberta honey to go around, but a lot on our shelves isn’t from here, so his ask is simple. Give the label a second look and choose honey made by Alberta beekeepers, or buy straight from a beekeeper near you.