Rene Van Acker

Photo of Rene Van Acker

Dean, Ontario Agricultural College Professor Ontario Agricultural College Department of Plant Agriculture Guelph, Ontario vanacker@uoguelph.ca Office: (519) 824-4120 ext. 53386

Bio/Research

Dr. Van Acker's research interests are weed management and biosafety.

- Weed Management is a constant challenge in crop production systems worldwide. The way in which weeds are managed is fundamentally a function of the nature of the production system and the opportunities with a produc...


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Bio/Research

Dr. Van Acker's research interests are weed management and biosafety.

- Weed Management is a constant challenge in crop production systems worldwide. The way in which weeds are managed is fundamentally a function of the nature of the production system and the opportunities with a production system for timely weed recruitment. Van Acker's weed management research focuses on weed recruitment biology and the impact of its nature on the efficacy of management approaches. He works in the context of the continuum of agricultural production systems from intensive to natural systems agriculture and I work collaboratively with researchers across North America.
- Biosafety: The next wave of novel traits being engineered into food and feed crops in Canada includes traits for plant-made pharmaceuticals (PMPs) and industrial bio-products. These traits will bring great value but some will pose risks to food safety if the traits are not adequately confined. A priori assessment and mitigation of these risks is greatly facilitated by the use of dynamic deterministic models of trait movement. The broad objective of van Acker's research in this area is to facilitate the future exploitation of novel traits in cropped plants by producing effective, detailed deterministic models of crop-to-crop novel trait movement (trait confinement models).


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