AcCELLerate-ON: Food Innovation with Cellular Agriculture Competition

With a potential result of food innovations that will create billions in economic value for Canada and environmental benefit for the world, Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN) and Ontario Genomics today announced AcCELLerate-ON, Canada’s first regional cellular agriculture competition. Designed to spark food innovation, this $700,000 program will support the research and development of viable food production methods such as cell culture, precision fermentation, tissue engineering, scaffolding and hybridizing production capabilities.

CFIN and Ontario Genomics are issuing an “Open Call for Applications” for genomics[1] and engineering biology-enabled proposals, including those in the social sciences, to solve industry and other end-user[2] identified challenges within and across the Ontario cellular agriculture, food and beverage ecosystems. This program is open to Ontario-led innovators and collaborative teams (i.e., teams comprising industry, academia, industry-academia, industry-industry, industry-other) that are in the position to address the identified challenge and implement the outcomes from the project.

Competition details and key dates:

• Applications and Program Guide available: November 30, 2021
• Online Info Session: December 14, 2021
• Applications accepted until February 28, 2022
• Project start date: May 1, 2022
• Project duration: 12 to 18 months