Inside CDC North: Bees, Trees and 75 Years of Alberta Agricultural Research

Let's begin with the bee.

We were walking through the arboretum at the Crop Diversification Centre (CDC) North, when one particularly determined bee decided our tour had gone on long enough.

She chased us away from the area and somehow became tangled in my hair.

I am not going to pretend I handled this calmly. In all fairness, we were near her hives. From her perspective, she was probably a tiny security guard escorting three suspicious visitors from a restricted area. Memo received, Madam. We left.

It was one of the funniest and, for a few frantic seconds, most terrifying moments of the day. But when I think back on my visit to CDC North, the bee is not what stays with me most.

What stays with me is the people, the knowledge and the enormous amount of work taking place quietly behind Alberta agriculture.

CDC North at a Glance

The Crop Diversification Centre North:

• Was established in 1951 as a provincial tree nursery
• Sits on 340 acres of Class 1 soils in northeast Edmonton
• Includes nine greenhouses
• Houses the Alberta Plant Health Lab
• Supports Alberta's Bee Health Team
• Is home to Alberta's Seed Potato Repository, the only provincially run seed potato repository west of Ontario
• Collaborates with universities, researchers, industry organizations and agricultural producers

What Is the Crop Diversification Centre North?

Located in northeast Edmonton, CDC North supports agricultural research, plant and bee health, crop development and disease diagnosis.

Before attending the anniversary celebration, I knew agricultural research centres were important in a vague, respectable sort of way. I imagined scientists, test plots, greenhouses and perhaps an impressive number of clipboards.

What I did not fully understand was how directly their work affects the farms, crops and food systems Albertans rely on.

Facilities like the CDC help identify diseases and pests, preserve valuable plant material, support emerging research and provide space where government, universities, industry groups and producers can work together. Much of this happens out of public view, but its impact can reach farms across the province.

The site began as the Provincial Tree Nursery and came under the Department of Agriculture in 1951, becoming the primary source of trees for Alberta's shelterbelt program. Today, its 340-acre property is divided by windbreaks into dozens of distinct research sections, providing field, greenhouse and laboratory capacity for agricultural research and diagnostic work.

That is quite a legacy for a facility many Albertans may not even realize is there.

Seventy-Five Years of Work, Knowledge and Relationships

I attended the celebration with President of the Agritourism Alberta Association, Tam Andersen.

When we arrived, former employees were reconnecting, current staff were welcoming visitors and people from across Alberta's agricultural community were gathering for the formal program. The atmosphere felt less like an institutional event and more like a reunion.

There was pride in the room, of course, but there was also warmth and nostalgia. Every conversation seemed to carry a small part of the centre's history.

I met Dr. David Feindel, Director of Plant and Bee Health with the Government of Alberta, whose responsibilities include CDC North. He spoke with me about the centre's work, its focus on plant health and crop disease as well as their community gardens.

Later in the program, Dr. Feindel received a plaque recognizing his service. Watching that presentation while surrounded by current and former employees reinforced something I would notice throughout the afternoon.

The formal program also included remarks from Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation Minister Tara Sawyer and others connected to Alberta agriculture. Their presence reflected how closely the centre's history is tied to the broader development of agriculture in the province.

How CDC North Helps Protect Alberta's Fields

One of CDC North's most important resources is the Alberta Plant Health Lab.

The laboratory helps identify diseases, agricultural pests, invasive plants and insects affecting Alberta crops and other plant material. This includes problems such as clubroot, blackleg and verticillium stripe in canola, bacterial leaf streak in wheat and barley, Dutch elm disease and other emerging plant-health concerns.

Why does that matter?

Because a farmer cannot properly manage a problem without first knowing what it is.

A symptom that appears to be caused by disease could be connected to insects, weather, soil conditions, nutrient deficiencies or another environmental stress. Treating the wrong problem wastes time and money. It may also allow the actual disease or pest to continue spreading.

Plant diseases do not simply appear one afternoon without context. Their development can be influenced by the host plant, soil, moisture, temperature, crop rotation and the ability of a pathogen to survive between growing seasons.

During lunch, I met a scientist from CDC South (because yes, there's another similar facility located in the south of Alberta) who was originally from the Philippines. We spoke about the differences between agriculture in Canada and her home country, but one of her comments stayed with me.

Plant diseases have cycles, she explained, some diseases are just part of their natural evolution and shouldn't necessarily be treated. That said, the intervention or the lack often is related to economic consequences therefore human intervention is needed.

Early identification gives farmers and agricultural professionals an opportunity to respond before a problem becomes more difficult or expensive to control. It can inform decisions about crop rotation, sanitation, treatment, monitoring and future planting.

The scale of that work is easy to underestimate. Since 2016, the lab has tested more than 10,000 samples free of charge for the groups eligible to submit them, including Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation, agricultural fieldmen, applied research associations, universities and municipal pest management organizations. Other groups and individuals are asked to contact the lab before sending anything in, so the right next step can be determined together.

Dr. Feindel also explained that the centre has laboratory space operating with Containment Level 2 safeguards. Containment levels refer to the procedures, equipment and physical controls used when working with different biological materials. These safeguards can include controlled access, protective equipment, specialized training and decontamination procedures.

The goal is safe, responsible research and diagnosis. It is not, as my imagination briefly suggested after hearing a comparison with Ebola laboratories, a setting from a Hollywood disaster movie.

This highly specialized work provides an essential form of agricultural infrastructure. Most people never need to think about it until something unexpected appears in a field, greenhouse, orchard or garden.

Then suddenly, having the right expertise available matters enormously.

A Cultural Garden Connecting Food and Heritage

Another highlight of my visit was learning about a cultural garden being cultivated at the centre in partnership with a community association.

CDC North contributes land and water, while members of the association provide their labour, knowledge and ongoing care. Among the plants being grown are crops connected to several African cultures.

This immediately caught my attention.

The garden represents much more than a place where vegetables grow. It is a meeting point between agriculture, culture, memory and community.

Food can carry powerful connections to home. A familiar plant may hold family traditions, childhood memories, cooking knowledge and cultural practices that have travelled across generations or continents. Growing those plants in Alberta also creates opportunities to learn how they respond to our climate, soils and growing season.

I later spoke with Cam Stevenson, Operations Lead at CDC North, who offered to connect me with the association caring for the garden. I hope that conversation continues.

There is so much potential in a project like this, particularly when we consider the educational role of agritourism.

Visitors rarely want only to see what is growing. They want to know who planted it, how it is prepared, where the seeds came from and why the crop matters to the people caring for it.

A garden may be what attracts someone's attention, but the human story is what they remember.

Bees, Bee Health and the Possibilities of Apitourism

CDC North is also home to Alberta's Bee Health Team, part of the province's wider work supporting honey bee health and apiculture.

During the celebration, I spoke with Dr. Medhat Nasr, a highly regarded apiculturist, educator and regulator with over 45 years of experience in both the public and the private sector. In Alberta, he served as Provincial Apiculturist from 2002 to 2019, and he now works with the Saskatchewan Beekeepers Development Commission. He introduced me to the term apitourism, meaning visitor experiences centred around bees, honey, beekeeping and pollination.

Apparently, one of the resident bees overheard this and decided I needed an immediate immersive experience.

For the record, getting a bee stuck in my hair is not the exact itinerary I would recommend. A thoughtfully planned apitourism experience would ideally involve a knowledgeable beekeeper, appropriate protective equipment and considerably less screaming.

The potential, however, is real!

Apiary tours, honey tastings, pollinator gardens, candle-making workshops and beekeeper-led demonstrations can help visitors understand the connection between bees, food and agriculture. One of our members, Christy Creek Honey in Lac La Biche County, is expert in this department, offering guided hive tours and honey tastings that earned them our Farm of the Year Award of Excellence. These experiences can transform something people encounter every day into a much deeper appreciation of pollination and the work required to maintain healthy colonies.

This is where agritourism becomes more than entertainment. It turns agricultural knowledge into something people can see, taste and remember.

The Trees Remember

After lunch, Tam, her daughter and I walked through the centre's trees and arboretum.

Tam had worked at CDC North at the start of her career as part of the Alberta Shelterbelt Program and one of her responsibilities involved caring for the tree collection. The province ran shelterbelt tree production here until it was privatized in 1997, and Tam had not returned in roughly three decades.

There was something surreal about walking beside her as she revisited that part of her life.

The trees had continued growing while careers changed, families grew and decades passed. For the rest of us, they were beautiful mature trees on an agricultural research property. For Tam, they represented a younger version of herself and the work she had placed into the land all those years ago.

Research is often discussed through reports, measurements and results. Yet the evidence of Tam's contribution was standing right in front of us, alive and still growing.

It was sentimental. Almost cinematic.

Then came the bee, perhaps determined to prevent the afternoon from becoming overly emotional.

Still, the moment with Tam changed the way I thought about agricultural institutions. Their impact cannot be measured only through research papers, laboratory results or crop yields.

Their legacy also lives on in the people who planted trees, maintained gardens, collected samples, cared for bees, managed greenhouses and passed their knowledge to the next generation.

What CDC North Means for Agritourism and Smaller Farms

During the anniversary celebration, we also had a conversation about the barriers small and medium-sized farms can face when trying to access agricultural programs, provincial brands and promotional opportunities.

That concern stayed with me.

Smaller operators often have remarkable products, properties and stories, but very limited time and resources. A family farm should not need a corporate marketing department to explain its value, welcome visitors or participate in a provincial initiative.

Agritourism can create new revenue opportunities, but those opportunities need to be realistic for farms of different sizes. Education, research, diagnostic services and industry programs are most valuable when producers understand how to find and use them.

Organizations such as Agritourism Alberta can help make those connections. We can introduce members to resources, bring concerns forward, share agricultural stories and create opportunities for producers, researchers, communities and government representatives to learn from one another.

CDC North also reminded me that Alberta's agritourism story is much larger than farm stays, corn mazes, pumpkin patches and U-picks.

Those experiences are valuable, but the story also includes laboratories, community gardens, heritage trees, research plots, pollinator programs and generations of people whose work remains mostly invisible to the public.

Making Agriculture's Invisible Work Visible

CDC North has spent 75 years contributing to Alberta agriculture, beginning as a provincial tree nursery and developing into an important centre for plant health, bee health, diagnostic services and collaborative research.

Its work helps us understand what is happening in Alberta's fields today while preparing for the diseases, pests and production challenges that may emerge tomorrow.

But its greatest resource may be its people.

The researchers, technicians, field staff and operations teams working at centres like CDC North possess an extraordinary depth of knowledge. That knowledge has been built through decades of observation, testing, successes, failures and conversations with producers.

It cannot be recreated simply by purchasing new equipment or opening another building.

This may have been my biggest takeaway from the anniversary celebration. Agricultural research is not distant from everyday life. It is woven into the crops we grow, the food we buy and the decisions farmers make every season.

Agritourism can help make some of that invisible work visible. It can introduce people to the growers, researchers, gardens, bees, landscapes and communities behind Alberta agriculture.

I arrived at CDC North expecting an interesting afternoon. I left with new connections, several ideas for Agritourism Alberta and a much deeper respect for the people and research supporting our agricultural sector.

I also left with a newfound appreciation for bees' personal boundaries.

When a bee tells you it is time to leave, you leave.