Anubhav Singh is BC’s first professor of food and beverage innovation.
Singh will oversee the food and beverage innovation centre planned for UBC, which will receive $2.6 million from the province over three years. The funding will be the basis for an endowment fund to support the centre’s establishment and Singh’s position.
BC agriculture minister Lana Popham made the announcement on October 25 at the university’ Point Grey campus in Vancouver.
She said supporting the food and beverage processing industry through an innovation centre had been a goal of hers since her appointment to the portfolio in 2017.
“Anything that we can do to encourage this is going to be great,” she said of supporting processing entrepreneurs. “We want to be the wind at their back as a province and creating partnerships with UBC [will help us] do that.”
Singh is no stranger to the agriculture industry. One of his projects was creating packaging to extend the shelf life of fresh blueberries.
“We are currently collaborating with nine companies,” he said. “We are learning what it will take to support the industry on the world stage.”
The innovation centre will focus on improving processing technology, creating new products, developing talent for the industry and becoming a conduit to share information with processors involved in the BC Food Hub Network. An announcement about the system to enable communication between the various provincial food hubs, the innovation centre and other stakeholders, is expected before Christmas.
China reopens meat markets