Throughout 2024-2025, Research Manitoba celebrates our 10th anniversary year. As we mark this achievement, we will be looking back at some of our past funded researchers to highlight their success.
Let’s grow: Manitoba Researcher Explores Greenhouse Innovation to Boost Prairie Food Production.
Profile written by: Brian Cole
In Canada, growing certain fruits and vegetables comes with a unique set of challenges. Our colder climate and condensed growing season put a natural cap on what can be grown, when, and how efficiently. For many crops, this has translated into a reliance on imports from warmer places like California, Mexico, the southern United States, and South America.
That dependency brings with it real concerns—elevated transportation costs, lower freshness, and significant vulnerabilities in the face of global supply chain disruptions. In recent years, these issues have grown more urgent as climate change, geopolitical instability, and inflationary pressures continue to shake up the global food landscape.
But in Brandon, Manitoba, one researcher is rethinking how and where we grow our food.
Meet Sajjad Rao—a faculty researcher at Assiniboine College who has spent more than a decade immersed in the intersection of agricultural innovation, sustainability, and food security. His mission? To find practical, cost-effective, and scalable solutions that allow farmers—and even communities—to grow more food locally, even in some of the country’s most climate-challenged regions.
And his approach? A mix of global experience, local insight, and a steadfast belief in the potential of greenhouse technologies to transform how we grow and eat in Canada.
A Career Rooted in Innovation
Rao, now 60, didn’t start out in Manitoba. Before joining Assiniboine College in 2011, he spent over 14 years with international agricultural powerhouses like Bayer Crop Science and Syngenta Inc. His roles took him across continents—leading applied research programs in South Asia, the Asia Pacific region, and North America. It’s that international lens, combined with his deep knowledge of plant science, that informs his current work in the Prairies.
At Assiniboine, Rao has become a driving force behind several applied research projects aimed at enhancing food security, promoting crop diversification, and building climate-resilient agricultural systems. In recent years, these efforts have received a major boost. A $1 million Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Matching Grant from Research Manitoba is funding an expansion of the college’s horticultural complex. The project includes four new greenhouses and a state-of-the-art research lab, cementing Assiniboine College’s role as a hub for agricultural innovation in Western Canada.
The Sweet Potato Experiment: A Two-Pronged Strategy
Of all the crops Rao could have focused on, sweet potatoes might not seem like the obvious choice for Manitoba. But this root vegetable, beloved for its sweet flavor and high nutritional value (rich in fiber, potassium, and vitamins A and B), has become increasingly popular among Canadian consumers. And yet—despite rising demand—Canada still imports over 81,000 tons of sweet potatoes from the U.S. annually.
Why?
The problem lies in the crop’s biology. Sweet potatoes need a long, warm growing season—up to seven months from start to finish. That’s simply not possible within Canada’s condensed May-to-September window.
“In the southern U.S., commercial production starts as early as March with the planting of mature tubers,” Rao explains. “These tubers produce slips, which are then transplanted to fields in June and harvested in the fall. In Canada, we’re missing those first critical months.”
Traditionally, Canadian farmers have worked around this by importing slips from the U.S. in the spring. While this practice has enabled some local production, it’s far from ideal. Shipping delays, quality losses, and missed seeding windows are common—and the costs add up.
So Rao came up with a two-step plan to bridge the gap:
1. Identify a variety of sweet potato that could thrive in Manitoba’s climate.
2. Develop a local greenhouse system to produce slips early in the season.
His first study, launched in 2015, evaluated several varieties—including Covington and Orleans, popular in the U.S.—against a lesser-known Canadian variety called Radiance, developed by Ontario’s Vineland Research and Innovation Centre. After two years of field trials, Radiance came out on top.
“A comparison of the three varieties showed that Radiance could be harvested about 10 to 11 days earlier than Covington and Orleans,” Rao wrote in an article for the Manitoba Master Gardener Association. “That’s a crucial advantage in Manitoba, where every day counts.”
With the right variety in hand, Rao turned his focus to step two: slip production.
Sajjad Rao and his research students tend to crops at Assiniboine College’s grow plot.
Three Greenhouses, One Goal
In 2019, Rao launched a full-scale study to test three different greenhouse designs for their slip-growing capabilities:
- C1 – A conventional, A-frame greenhouse with high-tech inputs, including alternating rows of metal halide and high-pressure sodium lamps for heating.
- PS1 – A passive solar greenhouse with low-tech inputs and no in-floor heating.
- PS2 – Another passive solar model, but this one with medium-tech inputs and in-floor heating.
All three were programmed to maintain day/night temperatures of 20°C and 18°C, respectively.
After two years, the results were in. All three greenhouses produced impressive slip yields:
- C1: 278.8 slips/m²
- PS1: 286.5 slips/m²
- PS2: 273.3 slips/m²
While the high-tech greenhouse performed well, Rao found that the passive solar greenhouses offered something even more valuable: efficiency and sustainability. Powered entirely by the sun, these systems dramatically reduced energy costs—without compromising output.
“In conclusion, local slip propagators can use passive solar greenhouses to grow affordable, quality slips for timely field production in Canadian regions,” Rao wrote in a 2023 paper. “This approach also represents a meaningful step forward in passive energy-based technologies that reduce environmental impact and enable year-round growing potential.”
The Next Frontier: A Greenhouse, You Can Build Yourself
While Rao’s work with sweet potatoes is ongoing, he has also set his sights on another ambitious project—one that could bring year-round, off-grid food production to farmers, families, and remote communities alike.
It’s called the greenhouse-in-a-box.
“The idea is simple,” says Rao. “A compact, portable, solar-powered greenhouse unit that anyone can assemble and use—no grid connection needed.”
Funded by the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, NSERC, and the Royal Bank of Canada, the greenhouse-in-a-box is being designed to grow strawberries all year long—even in the harshest Canadian winters.
The prototype, currently under construction at Assiniboine College, measures 16 feet wide, 10 feet tall, and 12 feet long. Inside are eight vertical growing walls, each outfitted with 30 grow cups. That’s 240 growing stations—all powered by solar panels and supported by insulation and fans to regulate temperature.
“Strawberries are easy to grow, packed with nutrients, and extremely popular with consumers,” Rao says. “But in Canada, they’re a seasonal treat. The rest of the year, we’re importing from California and Mexico.”
This compact unit is designed to flip that narrative.
“The proposed growing unit will overcome climate and soil restrictions and provide an opportunity for anyone to grow strawberries year-round—even in areas with limited daylight and extreme temperatures,” Rao says.
His goal? To release the greenhouse-in-a-box as a user-friendly kit.
“The three keywords are affordable, manageable, and sustainable.”
But when might the product hit the market?
“That’s a good question,” Rao says with a smile. “The prototype is nearly complete, and I’m starting to collect data. Hopefully, by next year we’ll have some answers.”
A Local Legacy with Global Implications
While sweet potatoes and strawberries may seem like small pieces in a much larger food puzzle, Rao believes the innovations behind them hold enormous potential.
From energy-efficient greenhouses to off-grid solutions, the technologies being developed at Assiniboine College could change how Canadians think about growing food—not just in the Prairies, but across the country and beyond.
“Our climate is changing, our food systems are evolving, and our communities are looking for new ways to be more self-sufficient,” says Rao. “We have the knowledge. Now it’s about putting it to work.”
Dr. Sajjad Rao is an accredited agricultural professional with over two decades of experience in climate positive agricultural Research and Development (R&D) Innovations and academic programs development and execution. Dr. Rao’s vision focused on environmental sustainability, food production technology innovations and transfer of green skills in future generation to address and overcome the climate and producer’s production challenges and foster new business opportunities for food processing industries.