British Columbia horticulture AI cluster — Surrey (orchard), Salmon Arm (mushroom), Vancouver Island (aquaculture), Vancouver (biocontrol)

NA-Canada (British Columbia)

Content

The British Columbia horticulture AI cluster is the substantive Canadian regional cluster for orchard, mushroom, aquaculture, and biocontrol AI. Spans four BC sub-clusters.

Four BC sub-clusters

Sub-cluster 1 — Surrey BC (Lower Mainland) orchard pest AI. Anchored by CropVue Technologies Inc. (Surrey BC) — AI-Enabled Smart Trap System for codling moth in apple and pear orchards. Partner: Okanagan-Kootenay Sterile Insect Release Board (OKSIR) Osoyoos BC — the industry-program that suppresses codling moth by releasing sterile moths. The OKSIR + CropVue partnership is a Canadian structural pattern — industry-programmatic deployment context + AI vendor.

Sub-cluster 2 — Salmon Arm BC (Thompson-Okanagan) mushroom AI. Anchored by 4AG Robotics Inc. (Salmon Arm BC) — vision-guided mushroom farming robot for 24/7 harvesting, processing, packing, disease detection, climate control, CO2 reduction. $1.55M CAAIN / $4.66M total project value.

Sub-cluster 3 — Vancouver Island (Vancouver Island coastal) aquaculture AI training. Anchored by Excel Career College — AI for Aquaculture training programme combining traditional knowledge and traditional Indigenous knowledge with AI/ML/IoT and digital skills. Partners: BC Salmon Farmers Association, Comox Valley Chamber of Commerce, Vancouver Island First Nations and regional development organizations. Funding: Digital Technology Supercluster (Talent & Connectivity pillar). Distinct from a deployment project — this is a training programme that explicitly targets aquaculture workers.

Sub-cluster 4 — Vancouver (Lower Mainland) biocontrol AI. Anchored by Catalera (Terramera spinout May 2025, $8.8M CAD Series A first tranche). Biological pest control product platform — ML for novel biopesticide discovery + soil-carbon chemistry. Sister to Terramera’s broader soil-sensing work. Plus Mowi Canada West (BC salmon farms) with the centralized AI-assisted Feed Centre; OnDeck Fisheries AI (Vancouver) with $1.5M PCAIS-funded electronic monitoring project; Salmon Vision team (SFU + Gitanyow + Skeena Fisheries) at BC weirs.

CropVue — substantive detail

Smart camera traps + ML for codling moth (Cydia pomonella) sterile-vs-wild classification. Used by OKSIR program (Okanagan-Kootenay Sterile Insect Release Board). Outcome: automated trap checks (previously manual), real-time differentiation, faster targeted sterile-moth releases.

The proposed system integrates rugged IoT-enabled camera traps with an ML model trained to recognize subtle visual differences on the moths’ bodies. The camera trap captures an image of captured moths, and the AI model classifies each moth as sterile or wild pest.

Outcomes (anticipated).

Amy Jancewicz (President, CropVue Technologies).

4AG Robotics — substantive detail

4AG+ vision-guided robot for 24/7 mushroom harvesting, processing, and packing. By integrating AI and robotics, the system addresses labour shortages, optimizes yields, and detects diseases. Real-time analytics, growth tracking, climate control, precision harvesting. CO2 reduction claim. Steven DeBoer (VP Finance and Business Operations).

Excel Career College — substantive detail

The Digital Talent & Connectivity pillar of the Digital Technology Supercluster funded this programme. The only documented Canadian aquaculture AI programme with explicit Indigenous-knowledge integration. Participants gain skills to optimize fish health, improve water quality, and enhance operational efficiency through AI and digital technologies. Targets oyster farming, salmon hatcheries, fish processing. Includes scaling blueprint for Canada-wide.

Catalera — substantive detail

Catalera (Vancouver BC) is the Terramera spinout (May 2025). $8.8M CAD Series A first tranche. Biological pest control product platform — ML for novel biopesticide discovery + soil-carbon chemistry. Caveat: AI component is research-discovery oriented, not yet deployed on-farm at scale.

Mowi Canada West — substantive detail

Mowi Canada West (subsidiary of Mowi ASA, world’s largest Atlantic salmon farmer). Centralized Feed Centre using AI to integrate oxygen/temperature/salinity sensors with feeding behaviour. Caveat: 2026 DFO transition plan for 79 BC salmon farms remains unresolved as of July 2026 — operational future uncertain.

Salmon Vision — substantive detail (Indigenous-led wild salmon AI)

Salmon Vision — SFU (Jiangchuan Liu, Jonathan Moore) + Pacific Salmon Foundation + Wild Salmon Center (William Atlas) + Gitanyow Fisheries Authority + Skeena Fisheries Commission. Supported by BC Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund + DFO. Deep-learning computer vision at First-Nation-run weirs on Bear River and Kitwanga River (Northwestern BC). 12 species, 500,000+ annotated video frames, mAP 67.6%, coho >90%, sockeye >80%. Model moving to YOLO v8 + multi-object tracking. Expanding to Koeye and KwaKwa rivers. Tier-1 source: Atlas et al., Frontiers in Marine Science 2023.

OnDeck Fisheries AI — substantive detail

Vancouver lead. Partners: Teem Fish Monitoring, Ha’oom Fisheries Society, Snap Information Technologies, Canadian Groundfish Research and Conservation Society, Ocean Wise, Goodfish Seafood Co., J.O. Thomas & Associates. $1.5M from Canada’s Ocean Supercluster under Pan-Canadian AI Strategy (PCAIS) Program. Aims to make electronic monitoring (EM) of commercial fisheries 10–12× more affordable for the projected surge in vessel coverage needed. Caveat: Project is positioned as building infrastructure, not as a deployed operational monitoring system yet. G-325.

What this unit is doing in the taxonomy

This is the BC regional value-chain substrate unit. Anchors:

Why it matters for talks

  1. The BC cluster has four sub-clusters — Surrey (orchard), Salmon Arm (mushroom), Vancouver Island (aquaculture training), Vancouver (biocontrol + salmon). Distinct from the Prairie grain cluster.
  2. The OKSIR + CropVue partnership is a Canadian structural pattern — industry-programmatic deployment context + AI vendor. Field-guide signal.
  3. The Excel Career College AI for Aquaculture programme is the only documented Canadian aquaculture AI programme with explicit Indigenous-knowledge integration. Worth carrying.
  4. Catalera’s $8.8M Series A is the largest disclosed Vancouver AI-agtech venture round (May 2025).
  5. Mowi Canada West + Salmon Vision + OnDeck form the BC Pacific aquaculture + fisheries AI cluster.
  6. The Indigenous-led AI deployment (Salmon Vision) is operationally deployed, not framework-only. Distinct from most Indigenous data sovereignty framings.

Critical context