Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative (ARDI)

Video Transcript

Female narrator:
The Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative, also known as ARDI, supports research and development projects in Manitoba's agriculture and agri-food industry.

At the University of Manitoba, a federal-provincial ARDI grant is supporting associate professor Dr. Rob Currie's work.

Dr. Rob Currie:
We rely on honeybees to pollinate a huge variety of different crops, fruits and vegetables.

These include crops such as apples, cucumbers, blueberries, sunflowers and a huge variety of other fruits and vegetables.

In fact, one-third of all the food we eat is somehow related to honeybee pollination.

As bees travel from blossom to blossom they carry bits of pollen with them, fertilizing the plants and allowing them to bear fruit.

But, honeybee colonies are threatened by a number of parasites and diseases.

For the past couple of winters, unusually large numbers of bees have been dying not only in Canada, but around the world.

With financial support from the Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative, we're looking at innovative ways to help the bees survive.

By using infra-red technology, we are observing how bees interact with parasitic mites.

We want to know why some bees are more successful at getting rid of mites than others. Protecting honeybees is important work because insects play a major role in bringing us the food we eat.

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