‘We are the pioneers’: N.S. prof striving to create perfect Christmas tree
HALIFAX — A Nova Scotia professor is striving to create the ideal Christmas tree, inside the only research lab of its kind in the world.
Dalhousie University’s Raj Lada is the director of the Christmas Tree Research Centre in Truro, N.S., a unique lab dedicated to improving balsam fir Christmas trees.
“We are the pioneers in terms of what we have been doing,” said Lada, a plant, tree and ecophysiology professor in the school’s Plant, Food and Environmental Sciences Department.
The centre’s flagship product is the SMART Balsam, which epitomizes the quintessential Christmas tree: architecturally sound, fragrant and an able to retain its blue-green needles for up to three months.
Lada said solving industrywide challenges, such as needle retention, is critical to the survival of the multimillion-dollar Christmas tree industry in Atlantic Canada, as it competes with other markets and artificial trees.
His interest in Christmas trees was sparked more than a decade ago, when a producer approached him after he was not paid for a shipment to British Columbia because of needle loss.
“I could see it in his eyes,” he said. “The trees had lost needles, but it looked like he had lost his life, like he had lost his business, his credibility.”
He began looking into the plight of the producer, researching shipping processes and other factors that affecting the trees during transport.
Lada then went to the Christmas Tree Council of Nova Scotia.
“It seemed this had been a common problem all these years,” he said.
Lada brought together producers from across Eastern Canada to form the Atlantic Christmas Tree Research and Development Consortium, and they devised research priorities.
The producers’ No. 1 concern: needle retention.
Among Lada’s latest projects is the SMART tree, which he believes will revolutionize the Christmas tree industry.