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Manitoba innovators win prestigious award

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 10/17/2012 7:48 PM | Comments: 0

By Mia Rabson

OTTAWA — The founders of a Winnipeg company that has helped farmers grow their crops more efficiently were honoured Wednesday with a prestigious Manning Award for innovation.

Kerry Green and Geoff Gyles accepted their $10,000 prize at a gala in Ottawa Wednesday night.

"We were pleased and a little bit surprised," Green told the Free Press about learning they had won. "It was a pleasant surprise."

Green and Gyles co-founded Wolf Trax, an agricultural company specializing in developing and manufacturing new nutrient products for crops.

Schooled in agriculture science at the University of Manitoba, the pair both had careers in agricultural product sales and agronomy, which led them to try and solve a problem farmers kept raising with them.

It can be difficult to apply micronutrients uniformly because they are included in only minute amounts in fertilizer mixtures. Some plants would get more micronutrients — sometimes described as vitamins for crops — while others would get none.

So Green and Gyles developed a product to fix that.

"What it allows the farmer to do is to apply the right amount to each and every plant," he said.

They created a patented coating for micronutrients known as DDP, which stands for dry dispersible powder. The coating put on micronutrients sticks to the macronutrients in fertilizers, so every ounce of product has the same amount of micronutrients.

They also created a patented technology that gets the micronutrients into the plants faster and to allows them to stay there longer and continue to provide nutrients over time.

Gyles said one product, Protinus, a DDP fertilizer applied to seed, helps crops germinate faster and grow bigger.

"When farmers look out at the field they can see an obvious difference," he said.

They began selling their original product in 2002. They have created a dozen different products since then.

Wolf Trax sells its products in 14 different countries. It is a privately held company mostly owned by Gyles, who is the company president, and Green, the managing director. They have about 20 employees in Manitoba.

This is the first time since 1997 and just the fifth time ever that the Manning Awards have rewarded an agricultural innovation.

It is only the fifth time Manitobans have received a Manning Award since the Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation was created in 1982. The foundation issues four awards each year to Canadian innovators — a principal award with a $100,000 prize, the David E. Mitchell Award of Distinction worth $25,000 and two Innovation Awards at $10,000 each.

This year, the principal award went to Geoffrey Auchinleck from Vancouver for a blood transfusion management system. The Mitchell Award was given to Dr. Roger Lecomte and Dr. Réjean Fontaine for developing a digital PET scanner. The other $10,000 innovation award was given to Terry Bigsby, from B.C., for developing Aspenware, laminated compostable utensils made from wood veneers.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

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