"If you look at the woodlands as an ecosystem ... we know very little." Ian MacQuarrie, Public Forest Council

The hopes for the bioscience industry on P.E.I. go beyond the jobs and revenue that could be created directly by the sector. If there is a sponge off P.E.I. shores that contains an anti-cancer agent, a plant in the forests that could help treat Alzheimer's disease, or a different strain of potato that might have value beyond being food, it could mean new jobs and a better living for people in the fishing, forestry and agriculture industries.

Applying good science to old knowledge of the P.E.I. forest could lead to valuable products.

Bioscience on P.E.I. was never meant to be a stand-alone industry; it is meant to be an extension of the industries that have sustained the Island since the Europeans arrived. These primary industries are under pressure, and bioscience is seen as a way to bring them new value, perhaps even from items currently being dumped for compost.

"In the fisheries industry, we think of those products as food," says Michael Mayne at the Institute of Nutrisciences. Mayne says there is evidence from species in other parts of the world that there could be anti-inflammatory compounds in mussel shells.

"[That will] not only try to help the mussel industry, but take another view of this primary industry beyond the food point of view. That doesn't mean we're replacing the food product at all. We're looking at value added."

The new NRC institute has a particular mandate to explore the natural world for new compounds that could be useful as nutriceuticals or pharmaceuticals. In that quest, it has partners such as Dr. Christiane DesLauriers, science director at Agriculture Canada's research centre in Charlottetown, who wants to see primary producers become partners in this industry as well.

Dr. Christiane DesLauriers would like to see primary producers involved in early stage processing.

DesLauriers would like P.E.I.'s expertise in growing potatoes developed to take aim at a higher value crop.

"We've got a gene bank that's got potatoes from all over the world, and all kinds of different sizes, and shapes and colours of potatoes," she says.

"We're finding that in some of those potatoes, there are valuable molecules that could be either extracted or you could grow a different kind of potato that could contain a higher functional food value."

At the Public Forest Council, Ian MacQuarrie is looking forward to seeing what researchers in the BioAlliance find in the Island's forests. His group is dedicated to convincing woodlot owners that managing a woodlot sustainably can be just as or even more profitable than clearcutting.

Ian Petrie investigates possible benefits to other industries from the bioscience sector.
(runs 6:14)

"If you look at the woodlands as an ecosystem, and how it's functioning up one hillside and down the other how this changes, and what the functions are of both living and dead components there, we know very little," says MacQuarrie.

"I suspect NRC is going to be able to pick almost anything they want there and find interesting things, and I would hope of course some things that have some use in the market."

MacQuarrie believes it is a matter of taking old knowledge of the medicinal value of plants and applying good science to extract exactly what in those plants is providing benefits.

The idea of value in plants beyond food is not new to P.E.I. The seaweed Irish moss has been harvested for carrageenan, a thickener used in ice cream and toothpaste, for decades. More recently, ground hemlock has been gathered for the taxanes, an anti-cancer agent, it contains.

The promise of a valuable harvest of ground hemlock on P.E.I. has evaporated.

While both harvests have produced jobs, both have also run into pressures from international markets. The Irish moss industry is a fraction of what it once was in the face of competition from Irish moss growers in the Philippines and Chile. The market for ground hemlock on P.E.I. has crashed entirely.

In 2004, ground hemlock seemed destined to become a major crop for the Island. About 1.4 million pounds was harvested, with a value of about $6 million. Landowners were complaining about people harvesting without permission, and there was pressure on the government to regulate how and when it was harvested, and the government followed through in 2006.

But by then, the regulations had little meaning. The rush for ground hemlock was over.

The major buyer for ground hemlock on P.E.I. was Atlantis BioActives, a division of Diagnostic Chemicals. The company was taking dried needles and young twigs, and processing them for the valuable taxanes. It had developed a process that took the dried hemlock about 70 per cent of the way down the value chain. It sold that product to a company in the United States, which did further processing before marketing to pharmaceutical companies. But the U.S. company found a cheaper supplier, and cancelled its contract.

Atlantis BioActives laid off most of its staff, and the repercussions were felt across the Island. Harvesters were literally left with barn loads of dried hemlock.

Pharmacy shelves are already packed with health products from natural sources, and primary producers on P.E.I. hope to benefit from the development of more.

"There was a lot of competition here, and people were buying material and processing [it] in New Brunswick and shipping it off to Asia, which is kind of a sad thing," says Colin Marr, who was business development officer for Atlantis BioActives and still works for Diagnostic Chemicals.

"That's essentially why we lost the jobs we lost. The jobs we lost went to Asia, based on that same raw material."

It is a strange irony of international business that it was cheaper for Atlantis BioActives' U.S. customer to buy taxanes produced in Asia from ground hemlock grown in North America, than to buy it from a processor in Canada.

But this irony cuts both ways. Atlantis BioActives has hired back most of the staff it laid off. It has moved its processing further up the value chain. It is still processing from dried hemlock, but increasingly it is buying low value taxanes from Asia. By the end of the year, it expects to be selling directly to pharmaceutical companies.

These marigolds, for sale in an Asian market, show how in some parts of the world there is already demand for different kinds of natural health products.

"We can go and go and buy one of the other taxanes from anywhere in the world, particularly India, and value add it, cheaper than we can extract it here," says Marr.

While this is good news for Atlantis BioActives and the bioscience industry in general, it means little for the forestry industry. Its primary customers are now in Asia, where the Island industry has to compete with larger-scale producers in Ontario and Quebec. What seemed four years ago to be a promising new revenue source in sustainable forestry has collapsed into a minor sideline at best.

The lesson is not lost on DesLauriers. It's not enough to find primary producers another low-value commodity to produce. Those commodities need to be moved up the value chain here on P.E.I., ideally by the producers themselves.

"We don't want people to have to put up a $20-million facility," says DesLauriers.

Day lilies are one of many common plants and animals being investigated for health benefits.

"Are there things that can be done easily on a small scale in small facilities, at least the first steps, and move into that value chain gradually?"

Researchers at the Institute of Nutriceuticals and Health are working on many possibilities for new products that could be extracted from the living things around P.E.I. Organisms as common as day lilies, marigolds and sponges could be the next big health story to emerge from the Island's NRC institute. But ensuring that primary producers can take advantage of those discoveries could prove as difficult as making the discoveries.