Dalhousie University

Purpose

The agri-food industry faces great challenges in sourcing high-quality raw materials and assuring the quality and specificity of their manufactured products along the supply chain. Being a leader in the production of canola and pulses, Canada is poised to develop processing technologies to produce plant based products with value added as well as the analytical solutions to characterize and differentiate them from the competition. In that context, NRC has been collaborating with industry to develop methodologies for authenticating and assuring the quality of raw materials and finished products for several years. Based on its experience and the NRC’s chemical barcoding platform, the project aims at accelerating the development of analytical solutions for the pulse industry by associating analytical chemistry expertise with chemometrics approaches, a research capability currently not available at the NRC and fulfilled by Dalhousie's scientists in this collaboration. In addition, to better understanding the chemical composition of pulses derived products, emphasis will be given on the development of prediction models to differentiate raw materials, propose new methods for pulses processors to enhance processing steps, and establish new standards in Canada to evaluate the quality of pulse derived products.