Key Takeaways:
- Montel Inc. is partnering with Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) to support indoor berry production without bees.
- The project is backed by up to $5 million in funding through the Weston Family Foundation’s Homegrown Innovation Challenge.
- Montel will design and host a pilot facility, MoFarm, in Québec to test airflow-based pollination technology.
- The initiative aims to enable year-round, pollinator-independent raspberry production.
- The collaboration seeks to strengthen Canada’s domestic food production capacity.
Montel to Host Pilot Farm for Airflow-Based Pollination Technology
Montel Inc., a Canadian manufacturer of high-density mobile systems, has announced a strategic partnership with researchers from Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) to support the development of pollinator-independent indoor berry production.
The initiative is supported by the Weston Family Foundation through its Homegrown Innovation Challenge Scaling Phase, which invests in Canadian solutions to enable reliable, year-round berry production. In June 2025, TMU researchers Professor Habiba Bougherara and Professor Lesley Campbell were awarded a grant of up to $5 million to advance their research.
As part of the collaboration, Montel will build and host a dedicated pilot farm named MoFarm. The facility, located adjacent to Montel’s manufacturing site in Montmagny, Québec, will provide a controlled environment to test and evaluate TMU’s patented airflow-based pollination and microclimate system under real-world vertical farming conditions.
Montel & TMU Focus on Pollinator-Independent Indoor Production
TMU’s research addresses a longstanding challenge in controlled-environment agriculture: achieving effective pollination of berry crops without relying on bees. The proposed system uses airflow and microclimate control to autonomously transfer pollen between flowers, initially targeting raspberries and potentially other berry crops.
The project aims to support pollinator-independent fruit set, reduce reliance on declining pollinator populations, improve yield predictability, and enable multi-layer berry production through compact plant architecture. The broader objective is to facilitate sustainable, year-round berry production within Canada.
“This funding allows us to build and test a system that could transform indoor berry production in Canada. Partnering with Montel gives us the ability to validate our technology under real indoor growing conditions,” said Professor Habiba Bougherara of TMU.
Infrastructure and Industry Collaboration
Montel will contribute engineering expertise and provide the infrastructure required to assess system performance across continuous production cycles. MoFarm is intended to mirror commercial vertical farming environments, supporting close collaboration between TMU scientists and Montel’s technical teams.
“Montel’s mission has always been to help growers ‘grow more’ with less space. Collaborating with TMU allows us to push the boundaries of what indoor agriculture can achieve when advanced science and engineering work hand in hand,” said Yves Bélanger, Vice President of Sales – Vertical Farming at Montel Inc.
The partnership reflects a broader effort to reinforce Canada’s domestic food production ecosystem through applied research and industry collaboration.
