The Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster
Project Description:
The objective of the Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster is to support collaboration in three key priority areas that will promote energy reduction and efficiency, innovative production technology and practices.
Cluster Director:

Karen Hauser
Karen Hauser serves as the Cluster Director for the Canadian Institute of Food Science (CIFST) under the Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster.
With her experience as an executive assistant and a rich background in executive administration, event planning, and operations, she is excited to bring these skills to her new role.
Before joining CIFST, Karen worked in financial services for over 27 years, having various roles throughout her tenure there.
Outside of the office, Karen enjoys spending time with her family, going to the gym and loves to read!
Scientific Director:

Phillip Lee Wing
Position: Scientific Director
Organization: Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster
Dr. Lee Wing is the Scientific Director of the newly formed Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster under The Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology.
He has been active in Food research and Innovations over three decades and not only brings Industrial experience but also practical solutions to Food related issues. In 2012, he was the President of The Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology (CIFST) and continues to serve on the CIFST Past Presidents’ Council.
He has served on many committees with OMAFRA, NSERC and has been an invited speaker on various occasions in China, Taiwan, and many parts of North and South America. He is also a member of the special Graduate faculty at the University of Guelph, Department of Food Science.
Scientific Advisory Board (SAB):
- Steve W. Cui, Chair
- Douglas Goff, Co-Chair
- Yongfeng Ai
- Rotimi Aluko
- Sampathkumar Balamurugan
- Iris Joye
- Lamia L'Hocine
- Michael Nickerson
- H.P. Vasantha Rupasinghe
- Thava Vasanthan
- Qi Wang

Organization: Guelph Research and Development Centre, AAFC; University of Guelph
Dr. Cui’s expertise includes dietary fibre and dietary fibre analysis, structure, and functional properties of bioactive carbohydrates and from agricultural products and natural hydrocolloids. He is specialized on extraction, fractionation, analysis of natural polysaccharides, and elucidation of polysaccharide structures using methylation analysis, 2D NMR and mass spectroscopic techniques.
He has been studying the bioactivity and structure-function relationship of polysaccharides by examining their conformation, rheological properties and functionality using light scattering and computer modelling approaches and developing methodologies and process technologies to incorporate soluble dietary fibre and plant proteins into food products to exert health benefits.
Dr. Cui is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Bioactive Carbohydrates and Dietary Fibre journal, and he is Editor and Editorial Board Member of the Food Hydrocolloids journal. He was Editor of the Food Research International journal for 3 years (2009-2012) and served and a Director for the Board of the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology (CIFST) for two terms (2009-2012, 2018-2021).
He authored and edited four books: “Polysaccharide Gums from Agricultural Products: Processing, Structures and Functionality (2000)” and “Food Carbohydrate: Chemistry, Physical Properties and Applications” (CRC Press, 2005), and “Bioactive Polysaccharides” (Elsevier, 2017) and Methodology for Structural Analysis of Polysaccharides (Springer, 2018).
Dr. Cui holds 9 patents and has published over 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers and dozens of book chapters in the area of food carbohydrates and dietary fibre.
Dr. Cui was Chair and Co-Chair of the 6th, 13th and the 16th International Hydrocolloids Conferences in Guelph, Canada (in 2002, 2016 and 2022, respectively), and is currently Chair of the International Hydrocolloids Society (https://international-hydrocolloids-conference.com/).
Dr. Cui was winner of the 2006 Leadership in Technology Transfer Award (Federal Government, Canada), and the Food Hydrocolloids Trust Medal in 2018. He was also the recipient of the Research Mobility Award by the French Government in 2019 and received the Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Science by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in 2021.
Dr. Cui graduated from the Peking University, China with a B.Sc. in Chemistry (1983), from Jiangnan University (Wuxi, China) with a M.Sc. in Natural Product Chemistry (1986), and from the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Manitoba) with a Ph.D. in Food and Nutritional Sciences (1993).

Organization: University of Saskatchewan

Organization: Guelph Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Organization: St Hyacinthe Research and Development Centre, Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada

Organization: Guelph Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
The Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster strategic plan is built upon two factors:
Survey undertaken by Canadian Food Innovators (CFI) in 2017 which assisted in the development of a prioritized plan for food processing research and Innovation in Canada at the company level. Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster has reviewed the report presented by CFI and adopted some of the priorities in this final Food Cluster Strategic Plan. The key research themes identified by CFI included:
- Food solutions that build public trust and address consumer needs.
- Food safety innovation.
- Innovative technologies that contribute to sustainable practices and climate change mitigation.
- Value-added products and processes for market growth and global competitiveness.
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Review and analysis of Individual Research Activities submitted to the Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster. The activities fall within the research priorities as defined by the AgriScience Program Guide under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (SCAP): Climate Change and Environment; Economic Development; and Sector Resilience and Societal Challenges.
Based on these two Guiding factors, the following priority Research theme areas have been developed:
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Climate change and Environment
GHG reduction and Waste Utilization with focus on Plant Based utilization. The development and applications of novel technologies in the agri-food value chain for a sustainable climate change and environment.
The Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster encourages innovative technologies that contribute to sustainable practices and climate change mitigation. With an increased global focus on reaching net-zero emissions, the shift to climate -friendly, sustainable food production presents significant sales and investment opportunities. The Cluster will develop and apply technologies that help to reduce the environment foot prints by promoting the use of plant-based proteins (versus animal-based proteins), and technologies that can use food waste and convert these into feed and foods resulting in pollution reduction. Along with reducing the amount of waste generated, the possibility of converting waste into viable added value products would be an overall priority for the Cluster.
Economic growth and Development
Since the funding principle for AgriScience is to include Strategic Value to Canada, Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster long term vision for sustainable development growth of the Food sector includes activities that increase value-added domestic potential of Plant Based products. Plant-derived materials are attracting growing attention in food and pharmaceutical industries due to their advantages over their animal counterpart, such as lower incidence of infection and contamination, less cultural and religious food habit limitations, targeting vegetarian consumers, along with their versatility and lower cost. With its higher sustainability from the environmental perspective, plant -based materials respects animal welfare and has a higher intrinsic ethical profile. Moreover, their production is associated with less deforestation and climate changes since it requires much less land and emits much less GHG compared to animal husbandry.
The Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster will build sector capacity and growth by adapting value added processing and developing novel food ingredients/products. In addition, the “Made in Canada” brand for healthy / functional foods and ingredients will enhance sector resilience and public trust. This also include novel processing/AI technologies with a resulting effect on improvement of food safety and food security. Each of the cluster activities under this category will significantly increase the economic growth and development in Canada as they are aimed at the execution of new processing technologies, novel functionalities and nutrition attributes which will enhance the global compatibility of the Canadian Agri-food sector in the global market. As emphasized in the Guide, three parameters are also addressed (1) participation of value chain partners (2) potential impact relative to cost, and (3) direct contribution to the other two pillars of sustainability and resilience.
Sector Resilience and Societal Challenges
With the novelty of the developed technologies, formulation and products, the results of the Food Sustainability and Resilience Cluster research activities will contribute to the sustainability of the agri-food sector, added value to the food production chain, increase the consumer confidence to the Canadian agri-food products. These will certainly improve the sector resilience and address the challenges faced by the agri-food sector in the past decade.