The battle against pesky insects and noxious weeds that plague livestock and choke valuable crops and rangeland in southern Alberta is heating up into serious biological warfare with the construction of a new high-security research lab in Lethbridge.

The special biocontainment facility, part of a multi-year expansion and upgrade of the Lethbridge Research Centre, is being built to Level 3 biosafety standards, meaning it can quarantine living insects, fungi and bacteria that have the potential for airborne transmission.

Scientist Rose DeClerck-Floate says biocontrol techniques can target specific pests with natural methods that don’t involve chemicals or damaging pesticides. Researchers at the centre will focus on developing biocontrol agents against weeds, insects and pathogens by using either beneficial insects or microbes.

“I’m not advocating the complete elimination of chemicals, because they can have their use if applied carefully and at the appropriate time so they’re effective,” says DeClerck-Floate, an entomologist. “But what we’re aiming toward is what’s called integrated pest management. And biocontrol is just another tool in the toolbox of control options.”

Jack Dagley photo, for Business Edge
Southern Alberta farmer Wayne Malowany eyeballs a grasshopper, a perennial plague of the Western Canadian agricultural landscape.

One example: the irritating flies that torment animals in stockyards and feedlots across the province. Researchers in Lethbridge are working on the possibility of introducing a parasitic insect that would prey on the fly, but cause no harm to the animals and their environment.

On the weed front, invasive and noxious species such as houndstongue have seeds with the ability to attach to people or the coats of livestock and vehicles, enabling them to spread great distances. Knapweed or leafy spurge can invade grazing lands, reducing plant diversity and degrading wildlife habitat while displacing sensitive native species.

According to the research centre, about two-thirds of Canadian weeds have been introduced accidentally or deliberately, often as ornamentals. Classical weed biocontrol, DeClerck-Floate’s speciality, imports insects that are the weed’s natural enemies from places such as Europe and Asia to provide a self-sustaining alternative to herbicides.

Unlike chemical usage, there are several variables in developing biological controls, says DeClerck-Floate. “You’re working with a living organism, it’s not a chemical. They have likes and dislikes, and those are the sort of things we learn here.

“We’re hoping to put them out in the environment once, and then they’ll be self-sustaining and propagating, looking after the weed on their own. Then they’ll be in the public domain, moving around on their own.”

The centre’s acting director, Peter Burnett, says the new biolab, expected to begin operating within the next few months, will be one of the top three of its kind in the world, boosting overall research capacity by 30 per cent. The centre’s expansion plans, with a budget of about $25 million, include 13 labs and associated offices, as well as insect-rearing facilities, a food research facility and a greenhouse complex.

While the new 9,500-sq.-ft. biocontainment lab is not a certified Level 3 facility, Burnett says it has been built to Level 3 standards to allow it to bring in insect and plant pathogens that could pose a risk to the outside environment.

Workers will pass through showers and don scrubs while in the restricted-access labs, which will feature a negative air-pressure system to prevent the escape of airborne particles. Walls are painted with light colours to better spot insects if they try to escape, while ceilings are kept low for easier recapture.

Once the insects are approved for release, they will be reared in greater numbers at the facility.

“What we’re all working towards is reducing the amount of chemicals in our environment,” DeClerck-Floate says. “This sort of research in biocontrol is bench-level stuff – we have to identify biocontrol agents that can be effective and develop them further so they can be handed off to private industry to mass produce and market.”

The Lethbridge Research Centre is Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s largest agricultural research establishment, and is the national centre for beef research in Canada.