Nationwide, it covered nearly 22.1 million acres last year, more than 99 per cent of it on the Prairies. The Canola Council of Canada puts its economic contribution at nearly $30 billion a year.

A University of Alberta researcher, backed by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Bayer Crop Science, is betting it can be even better.

The project is based on Habibur Rahman’s hypothesis that Brassica oleracea (B. oleracea), the family that includes broccoli, kale, cauliflower and other crucifer vegetables, carries genes that can benefit canola, which is also a brassica.

His previous research, in which canola lines were developed from crosses between Brassica napus canola and B. oleracea, have already proved the potential for improved seed yield. However, the specific genes influencing that improvement and many other traits are still unidentified.

Research backbone

Canola’s forebearer, rapeseed (B. napus), is the result of B. oleracea and another family, B. rapa, hybridizing in the wild about 7,500 years ago. Canola is the result of selectively breeding rapeseed for very low levels of erucic acid in oil and of glucosinolates in seed meal, which are undesirable in rapeseed products.

Both of canola’s scientific parents are highly diverse brassica groups, said Rahman, and “not all these diverse B. oleracea and B. rapa have been crossed in nature to capture the whole spectrum of diversity of these two parental species in B. napus.”

Rahman’s previous research, the foundation for his current work, involved crossing B. napus canola with cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and kale.

Although there is a range in flowering windows for those species, most flower late. Researchers were surprised by the resulting canola crosses. Some of the progeny flowered earlier than either B. oleracea or canola.

The same research demonstrated that B. oleracea, which does not include oilseed crops, carries genes that increase oil content in canola.

Current work

The new research employs a similar process to find the genetic regions of B. oleracea associated with bigger seed yields in canola, Rahman said.

His team will use DNA mapping techniques to identify the chromosome regions in B. oleracea that contribute to high seed yield and other desired traits. Eventually, they hope to find specific genes that could drive those traits in canola.

Rahman’s current work may also lead to new canola lines, using those developed in the previous project as a baseline to create hybrids. The hope is that new hybrids will carry fewer undesirable traits.

Researchers will then test the hybrids in field trials across the Prairies for characteristics like seed yield, days to flowering and maturity, disease resistance and oil and protein content.

Of course, that is a highly condensed version of Rahman’s research. Producers may not see the new hybrids for years.

The team has just passed the first year of the new project and hopes to single out chromosome regions associated with high canola yield in B. oleracea by the end of the fourth year.

“It takes many years to develop superior hybrid canola cultivars, but the genetic research we are doing is important to maintaining the profitability of this crop at the farm level,” Rahman said.

He considers this project “fundamental research” that is working toward crop improvement while focusing on what can be achieved in the longer term.

“We need some research that’s just for tomorrow, but we also need to carry out research which can give results the day after tomorrow to take the crop to the next level of improvement,” he said.

The post Building a better canola with broccoli appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

They selected Connor Bedard.

It was an easy pick and a good one. Bedard recorded 100 points in the 2021-22 WHL season and 143 points last year. In June, the Chicago Blackhawks selected Bedard with the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NHL draft.

But not every bantam hockey player in Western Canada is like Connor Bedard.

Only a small percentage of bantams drafted into the WHL become regulars in the National Hockey League, and a tiny percentage become superstars.

For many reasons, it’s difficult to predict the future of a hockey player when he’s only 14 or 15 years old. It’s especially hard in Round 5 of the WHL draft, when teams are selecting the 89th ranked bantam player in Western Canada. That player could become great, average or below average.

But what if there was a better way to predict how a player turns out; if there were a computer model that could evaluate a player’s traits — agility, skating speed and how many pounds they can bench press — and more accurately predict performance when he was 18 or 19.

If the model worked and five per cent of players became good enough to reach the NHL, the Regina Pats would be a much better team, year after year.

“What’s your player selection success — two per cent, three per cent? Who comes out as a home run (or a hat trick)?” says Rob Duncan, who is not a WHL general manager. He’s a canola breeder at the University of Manitoba.

“If you could turn that into eight per cent … because you have their genotypic information and could (determine) who is going to be better in a (few years), that’s massive.”

Duncan used the hockey player analogy to explain what he does as a canola breeder, or more accurately, how he uses a powerful breeding tool called genomic selection to deliver higher yielding and more resilient canola hybrids to Canadian farmers.

Genomic selection?

In the third week of October, inside a small conference room on the third floor of the university’s Plant Science building, Duncan was joined by two colleagues: Curt McCartney, a wheat breeder, and Sakaria Liban, a researcher at the U of M and an expert in genomic selection.

The three provided a brief history of plant breeding, highlighting that genetics and the understanding of genes has been part of canola breeding for decades.

However, scientists only got a full look at the plant’s DNA nine years ago.

“The genome sequence of canola has uncovered the complexities which define this important crop,” Isobel Parkin, an Agriculture Canada scientist in Saskatoon and a contributor to the canola genome project, said in August 2014.

“This knowledge will prove invaluable for making future agronomic improvements.”

Breeders had access to DNA markers for some traits before the canola genome was published, but the complete genome was expected to change the breeding game, said Wilf Keller, president of Ag-West Bio, also in 2014.

“The limited tools you had before were based on a little bit of DNA information from a very specific region. It would be like looking at a map from (Saskatoon) to Yorkton and you’d see the little stretch that takes you through Foam Lake and Wynyard, but you don’t see all the information … every pothole, every hill, every ravine, every slough,” he said.

“You’ll see all of that now, not just the odd spot here or there.”

Keller and Parkin were correct.

Having the full genome has changed how breeders develop new canola hybrids, but it took several years to take advantage of the newfound information.

A big reason was cost.

“The canola genome was published in 2014, but it was still too expensive for a breeding program to use,” Liban said. “You’re not going to blow your whole budget on that, sequencing one individual (canola line).”

Only the global crop science companies, such as Bayer or BASF, could afford to spend thousands of dollars studying the DNA of a promising line of canola.

The cost of the technology decreased “like crazy,” in recent years, Liban said. It’s now possible to get detailed genetic info for one canola line for the price of two beers at an NHL hockey game.

“There’s one company we send our samples to, we pay $25 for 19,000 positions (on the genome),” Liban said.

The 19,000 positions are only a fraction of the one billion base pairs in the DNA of canola, but it’s still a substantial amount of genetic information that breeders can use to predict whether a specific line of canola will be successful in the field.

Marker assisted vs. genomic selection

For about 20 years, crop breeders relied on marker-assisted selection to identify a gene or two that they wanted to pass to the next generation.

“Scientists use what are called molecular or genetic markers. The markers are a string or sequence of nucleic acid which makes up a segment of DNA,” says ISAAA.org.

However, having one marker is different from genomic selection.

“Marker-assisted selection, you’re looking at just one position of that billion (in the canola genome),” Liban said. “But one position that’s really, highly important.”

A simple example is eye colour in humans.

There could be one gene that is highly correlated to blue eyes. Identifying that one gene would be marker-assisted selection.

However, there are different shades of blue eyes, from grayish blue to a rich, dark blue. The actor Elizabeth Taylor was famous for her dark blue, nearly purple eyes.

“Even for human eye colour, there is a variation of hues. It (depends) not just on the high importance gene, but thousands of genes across the whole genome,” Liban said.

Crop breeders aren’t normally interested in the colour of plants or the shade of yellow of canola flowers.

However, genomic selection, or genome wide selection, can pinpoint dozens or hundreds of genes that are connected to a desired trait such as yield.

“For genomic selection, we’re selecting across the entire genome. We know this one (marker) maybe is associated with yield. … It, along with another 1,000 markers, are associated with yield,” said Duncan, who grew up on a farm south of Winnipeg.

How is it used?

Hunched over his laptop computer, Liban looked at a screen with numbers coloured yellow, orange and green. The data is overwhelming and hard to decipher for a layperson, but it’s genetic data for a line of canola in development.

Liban waved his finger at one part of the screen, pointing out genes that provide resistance to blackleg, a common disease in canola.

All this genetic data on disease resistance, yield, heat tolerance and other traits helps breeders select the best canola cultivars for further testing.

Returning to the WHL example, it’s like hockey scouts selecting the best possible bantam players to try out for the team. The difference is that Duncan has genetic data to make his selections.

Plant breeders didn’t have this genomic information 50 years ago. They might have randomly picked 100 canola crosses for testing in the field, which could have included 10 winners, 10 losers and 80 that would have been average.

“In a typical breeding population, you make all these crosses. You can’t test all of them,” he said, while standing in front of a whiteboard inside the conference room.

“You will get variation. … You will have some high yielding individuals and some low-yielding individuals.”

The advantage of genomic selection is that breeders can pick the best of the best. Instead of testing 100 and finding only 10 with potential, they can test 100 cultivars with strong potential.

“With genomic selection, you’re testing the same population size, but now you’re testing a population that has an improved mean (higher average for yield and other traits),” Duncan said.

“What has changed is the quality of the populations.”

Phenomics still important

Having a tool such as genomic selection is valuable, but good genetics can only take you so far. The canola cultivar has to perform under field conditions in Western Canada.

How they respond to factors such as sunlight, heat, soil nutrients and disease pressure is known as phenotyping.

“Phenotype would be what you could measure or observe in the field trial,” said McCartney, the U of M cereal breeder.

“The genotype would be the actual DNA in that breeding line. That (genotype) is fixed, but the phenotype varies at every location you test.”

Returning to the junior hockey analogy, a 16-year-old entering the Western Hockey League might have great genetics because his dad was a NHL player, but he has to perform in the WHL environment. That environment could be a tough road game versus the Prince Albert Raiders, shooting against the best goalie in the league.

Monitoring cultivar performance in the real world will continue to be a key component of plant breeding.

“The phenotyping hasn’t changed. … From 1900 to today, we’re still doing phenotyping,” Liban said. “What we’re doing now is we’re only phenotyping things that we know have the traits of interest.”

Duncan walked to the whiteboard in the conference room to explain the importance of phenotyping data. He wrote an equation: Model = G X P. The G stands for genetics and the P for phenomics.

Plant breeders use genetic data and results from plot trials (phenomics). Then they feed that data into a machine-learning model or mathematical model.

The model helps them predict how a canola cultivar with a set of desirable genes will perform in the real world.

“You’re using the field data and correlating it with DNA markers,” said McCartney, who is from the area northwest of Portage la Prairie, near Westbourne.

“You test new breeding material with those same DNA markers and you can predict how they’ll perform in field trials in terms of all the traits you’ve measured in the past. That’s the idea with genomic prediction.”

Better varieties, improved genetic gain

After 70 minutes of explanations and drawings on the white board, Duncan summarized what this modern plant breeding technology means for canola growers.

From 2000 to 2020, average canola yields on the Prairies went from about 23 bushels per acre to 40. Some of those gains came from blockbuster innovations, such as herbicide tolerance and pod shatter resistance, and a portion came from year-over-year improvements in canola hybrids.

Using genomic selection and computer models that predict how promising cultivars will perform in the field, breeders can produce varieties that are maybe three per cent better than the old ones — higher yielding, deeper roots, maybe more tolerance to heat in July.

“Your rate of genetic gain … the amount of improvement you’re making every generation, can be higher when you (use) this genetic selection,” Duncan said.

A yield gain of three per cent isn’t noticeable right away, but if breeders can repeat the three per cent increase in each new generation, canola hybrids released in 2035 will have much higher yield potential than the varieties of today.

“That genetic gain … is going to (go up) a steeper slope,” Liban said.

Genomic selection isn’t a blockbuster technology that will push yields 20 per cent higher overnight. It’s another tool for plant breeders, Duncan said — a powerful one, but still a tool.

“Ultimately, (it) means I’m going to be registering a better product, sooner, and getting that to the farmers sooner.”

– Robert Arnason is a reporter with The Western Producer.

The post Genome selection finds next canola superstars appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

But that realization strikes producers who have taken the Combine to Customer course put on by Cereals Canada.

“I now have a whole new appreciation of what happens with that kernel of wheat when we’re done with it and all the diligence that goes on afterward to ensure that we have a market to move our commodity to,” Vermilion farmer Shawn Jacula said from Winnipeg’s airport on his way home late last month.

“I’m just still absorbing it all.”

Combine to Customer, held every February and March in Winnipeg, covers topics such as key qualities of wheat classes, the current market outlook and grain grading demos.

“You go into it thinking wheat is wheat is wheat — and you find out that’s not the case,” Greg Sears says in a new video promoting the program.

The Sexsmith-area farmer, who took the course in 2019, said he also has a new appreciation for “all the work that goes into developing markets” and maintaining them.

“It really broadens a farmer’s perspective on the value chain and what happens to our wheat and barley once we leave them at the elevator,” he said in an interview.

Sears learned the “value chain” isn’t so much a chain as a series of loops where parties on one part of the continuum strategize meticulously with others.

“What you learn is the development process: how breeding takes place, how certain older varieties are cross-bred to produce the newer varieties, the registration process for new varieties, testing, and the collaborative effort that happens between the plant breeders, the marketing companies and the Canadian Grain Commission to make sure that all new varieties are consistent with what our markets expect,” he said.

The course covers how different varieties of wheat have evolved over the years to adapt to new markets and changing tastes.

“All along there’s checks that make sure that milling wheat still meets customer needs for bread making or noodle making,” said Sears, who is now chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission.

“It highlights the diversity of what you might perceive as a homogeneous crop of wheat; the different varieties, classifications and quality going to different end products, whether it’s noodles or pan breads or flat breads. All over the world there’s different uses for our product.”

The sheer reach of Canadian wheat products worldwide surprised Sears.

“The number of countries we export to is really a staggering statistic.”

It also gave him a better understanding of global tastes and policies.

“It highlights the importance of such things as using crop protection products properly, using registered varieties of crops, and maintaining the quality of what you produce and how important that is to the supply chain.”

Jacula, Alberta Wheat’s second vice-chair, said he was pleased to learn about the importance of falling numbers (a high falling number is a sign of good dough elasticity) in the bread making process.

“Falling number was a hot topic a couple of years ago but I think I didn’t quite understand the severity of that to the production of mainly bread,” he said. “That was something that was eye-opening for sure.”

He was also happy to see such a diversity of people —in terms of geography and what they bring to the value chain — at the event.

“If I have a concern or a challenge on a certain topic, I’ve just expanded my range of people that I can reach out to, to help me and my operation,” said Jacula.

The program has been around for years but people usually learn about it from past attendees.

“There’s been lots of chatter about how good of a course it was — and being somebody who just became an alumni of it, I fully agree,” said Jacula.

“I have several friends and neighbours who have gone on it and spoke highly of it. The timing never really worked out for me until a couple of years ago when I was finally able to go.”

The video can be found at the Cereals Canada YouTube channel.

The post Unique program tells the rest of the story on wheat appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Drought is big on everybody’s minds these days,” said Harpinder Randhawa, a wheat breeder with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge research centre. “Especially in Western Canada, we rely heavily on the natural water availability of rainfall.”

Droughts are forecast to become more frequent in Western Canada, and climate modelling indicates more variability in weather patterns, said Ron DePauw, a retired federal wheat breeder who is now a science advisor for seed company SeCan in Calgary.

“Summer temperatures will be warmer, with higher maximum temperatures,” said DePauw. “Moisture distribution is predicted to shift also. There will be less in July and August. Those are critical times for the growing of the wheat plant.”

The impact of climate change is already being seen, added Randhawa.

That’s backed by Alberta Climate Records, a website created by University of Lethbridge professor Stefan Kienzle that contains nearly seven decades of weather data, from 1951 to 2017, collected from hundreds of weather stations across the province.

The searchable database (at www.albertaclimaterecords.com) shows average mean temperatures in much of the province are two or more degrees warmer than in 1951 and many areas are seeing considerably less rainfall.

“Wheat doesn’t like either of these,” said Randhawa. “Wheat likes to grow in cooler temperatures.”

When it’s hotter, there are also higher rates of evapotranspiration.

“Drought is usually associated with a high temperature,” said DePauw. “When you have a high temperature drought, you can have high temperature and loss of moisture.”

[RELATED] Genomics takes wheat breeding into new era

The pivotal times

“If there is enough moisture to germinate, it will grow,” said Randhawa. “But the critical stage of the growing point is the tillering stage, about three to four weeks after germination.”

Tillering is directly tied to moisture availability.

“If (the plant) is hit hard at the tillering stage, you get just one or two tiny tillers, and that is a very big bottleneck,” he said. “You have just one or two tillers instead of five to six tillers, and that will have a significant impact on grain yield later on.”

Even if the plant gets past that stage, it’s not in the clear. Without enough moisture later on, there will be an abortion of the tillers, DePauw said. The same thing can happen to flowers if there’s intense heat or lack of moisture at the flowering stage.

“Instead of getting 100 kernels per head, you might only get 25,” he said.

Things can even go off the rails in the home stretch.

“Let’s say everything was good until the end of flowering,” said DePauw. If drought and severe moisture stress occur then, “the size of the kernels will be reduced.”

As many producers know from last year, all those things can occur in a single growing season.

“If the whole bloody season is drought shock, well, you’re going to have a scruffy little stalk, there’s not much for tillers, there’s only one head per plant, and only kernels of small size,” said DePauw. “That’s what happened in 2021.”

That’s called a terminal drought, said Randhawa.

“Wheat will just cook and dry very fast. You will have shrivelled grain. The in-fill period is shortened and the grain won’t fill properly. It has an impact on yield and quality.”

Not every field last year was hit at all those critical times, but conditions affected enough to reduce average prairie wheat yields to an average 34.8 bushels per acre in 2021.

The complicated quest

But it’s hard.

“Drought resistance is a very complex trait,” he said. “It’s not a simple trait that we can breed for, like rust resistance.”

Nor are semi-dwarf varieties likely to be the answer.

“Semi-dwarf varieties are less tolerant to drought because they don’t have a lot of root biomass — the shorter plant has shorter root biomass, too,” said Randhawa. “In drier conditions, you need a bigger root biomass, so they can go deeper and get moisture from the soil.”

The quest for drought resistance means breeders need to look at the entire plant, not just one specific trait. That package of traits includes factors such as root depth, plant height, how leaves operate (such as rolling up to reduce surface area and water transpiration), photosynthetic rates and water use.

It’s a complex mix of different factors that makes the mechanics of breeding more of a challenge.

Breeders screen for drought by growing wheat in fields in drought conditions, said Randhawa.

“You can do things in greenhouse or in controlled conditions, but it does not really give you a good picture if you want to develop a line because there’s a lot of interaction with other traits. You need field-scale screening.”

But there’s a major drawback to that approach. If there’s good moisture in a given year, trials won’t reveal much about drought resistance. The recent run of dry years has actually been a boon for breeders, Randhawa noted.

“The increasing frequency of drought over the past few years does provide a breeder with a tool to screen and select lines which are more drought tolerant, because if there is no drought out there, it will be very hard to screen and select for.”

Even then, the need to have lots of horses in the race complicates things. A breeder might start by screening 100 lines, select 10 that perform better under drought conditions, and then trial them to see how they perform.

Breeders are using germplasm from their breeding programs and from different wheat breeding centres, particularly international ones where breeding for drought and heat is also underway.

“We got some of the material and we planted that trial this year,” said Randhawa. “We will start screening in the next couple of years and will look for traits that perform best under drought conditions.”

The Lethbridge Research Centre and its sister station in Swift Current, Sask. — another semi-arid part of the Prairies — are prime locations. Testing promising varieties at both locations will aid the effort, said DePauw, who was senior wheat breeder at Swift Current before retiring. (He was dubbed the “billion-dollar man” in recognition of nearly 60 wheat cultivars he and his colleagues developed over his four-decade career.)

Though it can take 10 years to develop a new wheat variety, breeders do not have to start from scratch to screen for drought tolerance, said Randhawa.

“We have the material in the pipeline, coming in every year. We have lines that are going into pre-registration trials or registrations trials.”

Through use of genetic screening tools, breeders should be able to find drought-tolerant varieties in less time than it would take to breed new plants.

That said, there are no miracle varieties that will suddenly appear in the warehouse of the local seed dealer.

The initial focus is on finding varieties that beat the check by at least five per cent under drought conditions.

“You are looking for some type of genetic gain, and I think that would be at least a good start,” said Randhawa. “Then you build upon it, you generate more genetic material, and you build upon that.

“The key is to keep screening for drought and heat and maintain the yield as much as you have it, and always compare with the check variety to see how they perform.”

The post The quest for drought-tolerant wheat heats up appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Some farmers and seed industry officials suspect Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) variety development work, along with many other programs, will be on the chopping block post-COVID-19 as the government tackles its biggest budget deficit since the Second World War.

“We are serious when we say that we believe science and innovation is important and we want to continue investing in that,” Bibeau said during an online session with several CFWF members.

In late 2018 the federal government started consulting with farmers about a seed industry proposal to implement either an end point or trailing royalty to collect additional money from farmers to encourage private and public plant breeders to produce even more improved varieties.

It’s commonly referred to as ‘value creation.’ The argument is that while farmers would pay more for seed, they would also be more profitable.

A lot of farmers oppose both options, saying if they have to pay more they want some control over both how their money is spent and the varieties that spring from it.

The consultations stalled and COVID hit, becoming the government’s main focus.

“The idea (of the consultations) was to find the best approach working closely with the industry, but no way was it the intention to get the government out of these investments,” Bibeau said.

Despite Bibeau’s reassurance, government priorities sometimes change and so do governments.

Publicly developed varieties, including AAFC’s, currently make up most of what SeCan, a not-for-profit seed distribution company, sells.

No entity supports public plant breeding more than SeCan, its business manager for Western Canada, Todd Hyra, said in a recent interview. But he also noted AAFC’s plant breeding funding has been declining for years.

The status quo in plant breeding wasn’t sustainable even before COVID-19, Tyler McCann, interim executive director of the Canadian Seed Trade Association, said in an interview Aug. 11.

Should the government stop or curtail plant breeding, farmers will need private plant breeders to step up, Hyra said.

— Allan Dawson is a reporter for the Manitoba Co-operator at Miami, Man.

The post Bibeau says government committed to federal plant breeding appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

As a result, some products could be sold to farmers without a USDA review — a move that comes despite concerns by consumer groups over biotech crops.

The final rule is the first major overhaul of USDA’s regulations over biotech plants, seeds and microbes since 1987, the agency said. Previously, USDA’s review system focused on genetically modified organisms, where a gene is added from another organism.

Existing regulations have not kept up with emerging technologies such as plant gene editing, which works like the find-and-replace function on a word processor: It finds a gene and then makes changes by amending or deleting it.

Scientists can edit genomes more precisely and rapidly, and altered agricultural products could get to market more quickly and cheaply, say biotech advocates.

If a company uses biotech to create a product that has traits that could have been achieved through traditional plant breeding, it would no longer have to go through a pre-market review through USDA, the agency said.

Such products typically require USDA to conduct a risk assessment of whether they can cause or spread plant diseases, among other vetting. Some of those products also are reviewed or regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which has oversight over food safety, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

“If it’s a GMO, that’s basically what they’ve been looking at over and over again for the past 20 years, they’re saying they don’t need to look at new examples,” said Clint Nesbitt, senior director of science and regulatory affairs with Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry group that represents companies such as Bayer.

“If what you’ve done with gene editing could have been done with plant breeding, you’re good to go,” Nesbitt said.

The change, first proposed during the Obama administration, comes after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last summer directing federal agencies to streamline the review process for agricultural biotechnology including genetically modified livestock and seeds.

Consumers have pushed for years for greater transparency over what is in their food, fighting for GMO labeling on consumer products against pushback from farmers, biotech firms and food companies that argue such genetically engineered ingredients are safe.

Genetically modified crops were a sticking point between the United States and China during their trade war. Beijing took years to approve new strains of those crops, which U.S. companies and farmers have complained stalls trade by restricting the sales of new products.

— P.J. Huffstutter reports on agriculture and agribusiness for Reuters from Chicago; additional reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago.

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Since 2011, plant-breeding researchers have collaborated with organic farmers in a breeding program in which the producers select lines from trials on their own farms.

Normally, a breeder goes through a plot, and selects the best spikes, heads or plants according to their breeding goals.

“The participatory plant-breeding program is different in that instead of getting a breeder to make those selections, we get organic farmers to make the selection,” Michelle Carkner, participatory plant-breeding co-ordinator at the University of Manitoba, said during a recent plot tour at the University of Alberta.

The project started in Manitoba, and has since spread across the country.

Farmers started with early-generation wheat seeds, planted them on their land, and then selected 400 of their best spikes and sent them back to the University of Manitoba. The staff cleaned them, and returned them. Farmers planted them again, and sent more selections back to the university, for three years in total.

In 2013, the group expanded the program to include oats and potatoes along with wheat (although the potato program proved short lived).

To date, researchers have worked with more than 80 farmers across Canada, from Vancouver Island to Prince Edward Island.

Put to the test

Many of the current oat lines growing in the U of A research trials are farmer-selected populations. This proves farmer-selected populations can do well, and can meet requirements for breeding, said Carkner.

“If they do well, they can move into the Western Co-op trials and become a variety,” she said.

The wheat populations now growing in the test plot at the university’s south campus farm were selected for three years from various farmers and are now being compared against registered wheat checks such as Glenn, Vesper, AAC Tenacious and AAC Tradition.

Tradition is the first wheat variety registered that was selected and grown under organic farming requirements.

The wheat populations will be selected for three years, and will be compared against registered checks in the trial.

Ward Middleton, an organic grain and oilseed producer from Morinville, participated in the breeding program from 2012-15, and populations he selected are being tested — along with other farmer-selected ones from across the country — at the university.

“Philosophically, it was a good fit,” said Middleton, before adding, “It might not be a good fit for the farmer, because the research crop was secondary to my primary crop.”

That’s because the business of growing grain came first — with the research crops being planted a few days after his primary crops went into the ground.

“An actual researcher would probably be a little more disciplined in their regimen,” said Middleton. “I would tell myself that maybe I’m going to select for what produces the best in a short growing season. Even though I liked the concept of the program, I felt I wasn’t doing a good enough job.”

Choosing the criteria

But he appreciated the opportunity to select for traits that he most wanted.

For example, Middleton didn’t select the wheat spikes based on whether or not they had awns.

“I was just looking for what is giving me the most seeds in the head, as well as what will produce a head if it had weed pressure,” he said.

And that meant no babying — instead of trying to protect the populations from weeds, he grew wheat in high weed areas. Middleton also only pulled seed heads off whatever set seeds in an area where there was high competition.

“I always felt like I didn’t know if that was scientific enough,” he said. “It’s nice to hear that some of these trials performed well in comparison.”

He later learned he had selected populations with awns and without awns — although four years on, he figures he might have made different selections as deer eat the awnless populations and leave awned populations. On the other hand, awnless has its merits, too.

“Last fall, it was an early winter and it snowed a nice, wet, heavy snow and the awned varieties acted like a tennis racket and filled with snow and they keeled over. The awnless varieties have a smaller profile and when the snow comes on them, it doesn’t kink them over. In the view of an unstable jet stream with climate change, maybe I should be moving to the awnless varieties.”

He saw his role in the breeding program as helping researchers achieve the geographic diversity they are looking for in the selection process, as well as offering a different opinion and mindset.

He picked populations with traits that he thought might work, and these populations might be crossed in the future.

“I’m building the inventory of a seed bank for future resources,” he said. “If anybody is considering participating, I got as much value out of it for me, and the way I think as a farmer about the plants and selecting plants and using that as a bit of a service that I can offer to a downstream customer.”

Any organic grower who is interested in the program can contact Carkner at michelle.carkner@umanitoba.ca.

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“At this stage, there are still more questions than answers about all of the models that have been put forward,” said Tom Steve, general manager of Alberta Wheat and Barley.

“So now we have three models that are very difficult for farmers to assess in terms of what the outcomes might be.”

Two royalty options were put on the table this winter — both intended to spur private investment in cereal breeding.

“The ultimate goal would be to have a healthy system where there is strong public sector presence and the option of private sector varieties as well,” said Steve.

“But right now, we have a system that’s dominated by public varieties. We don’t have a significant amount of private investment in wheat and barley breeding. So how we partner with the private sector is probably one of the major questions we have.”

The first model is called an end-point royalty, which would be collected when grain is delivered to an elevator (with the money later distributed to breeders based on their market share). The second is a trailing royalty — it would be paid to the variety developer on a per-acre or per-bushel basis. It would oblige farmers to remit a royalty on the farm-saved seed they plant.

Both options received a cool reception from producers last winter. In the months since then, the conditions around farm-saved seed have been the real sticking point for wheat and barley producers across the Prairies — the growers who potentially stand to gain the most from additional private investment in plant breeding.

The third option doesn’t seem to address that, said Steve.

Seeking a middle ground

Developed by Alberta Federation of Agriculture and its counterparts in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the third model is being pitched as a middle-ground alternative that will attract private-sector breeders, enhance public variety development, and give producers some say in plant breeding.

This model is also an end-point royalty but some portion of the funds (a “carve-out”) would be held by a collective research entity with representation from producers, the seed industry and the public sector. This money — an as yet unspecified percentage of the royalty — would fund projects such as plant breeding for minor crops, exploring under-researched traits deemed important to Canadian producers, and supporting other activities that address gaps in plant breeding.

But it also appears to include a mechanism for seed companies to create contracts that could limit the number of years a farmer could use farm-saved seed — a non-starter for wheat and barley producers.

“The ability to save and reuse seed in Western Canada is a long-standing tradition, and I think most farmers see it as a right, or at least a privilege,” said Steve.

“In the current environment, the right to save and reuse seed is of paramount concern, and any new model will need to be able to preserve that right.”

Numbers needed

But as far as Steve is concerned, that’s only a symptom of a bigger problem in the royalty review process — a lack of clear cost-benefit analyses for each of the three options.

“For none of the three models have we actually seen a detailed economic analysis of how they would work,” he said.

“Our criticism on the consultation process for the end point royalty and the trailing royalty was that the government did not provide the economic analysis. They still haven’t provided that.

“And while I commend the organizations that put together a third model, we need to see more evidence of the cost-benefit analysis for the outcomes.”

Farmers want to know if any of the models will actually attract private breeders, said Steve, adding organizations like his are already investing in cereal breeding.

“So in some respects, the third model is a reinvention of the wheel,” he said. “It’s simply repurposing what we’re already doing. ”

The industry may need to go back to the drawing board for a better solution, he said.

“We need to come to a decision point: Do we want to have additional private investment in breeding, or do we want to continue down the same path?” said Steve.

“If we want to continue down the same path, the mechanisms are already in place to do that. We still haven’t seen clear evidence that any of these models will do that over and above what we’re already doing today.”

The complexity of the issue — and the lack of specific details — makes it difficult for farmers to evaluate what’s being proposed, he said.

But ultimately, they will “gravitate to the arrangement that makes them money.”

“We don’t want a system that adds costs to farmers for growing wheat or barley. We want a system that has a net benefit,” said Steve.

“If it’s imposing additional checkoffs or costs, we would have difficulty supporting it.”

While the consultation process is expected to carry on after the federal election in the fall, the prospects of any big changes are likely years away.

But it’s an issue that producers need to be involved in.

“It’s important to their economic future and the bottom line of their farms to understand where the varieties are coming from today and the producer contribution to those varieties, because it is significant,” said Steve.

“Farmers need to understand the whole picture — what their investment is, and what the potential return is.”

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They must be approved by the CFIA as well as Health Canada (in the case of food products) prior to commercialization or introduction into the environment.

That process can be lengthy.

Take the case of the Arctic apple, a non-browning variety developed by Okanagan Specialty Fruits, a small ag biotech company in Summerland, B.C.

It didn’t use genome editing to develop the variety, but did employ a method of gene silencing called RNA interference. This technology was used to ‘turn off’ the genes that produce polyphenol oxidase, the enzyme that causes browning when an apple is bitten, sliced, or bruised.

Nevertheless, winning government approval proved to be an “extremely rigorous process,” company president Neal Carter said in an email. Okanagan Specialty Fruits submitted its application to the CFIA in December 2011 and it took until May 2015 before the apple was approved for commercial sale in Canada.

“Health Canada was also engaged for a review of Arctic apples to demonstrate they are just as safe as conventional apples,” said Carter.

While regulatory approval was lengthy — and came on top of a two-decade-long product development process — Carter said he understands why it took so long.

“We can only best speak to our own experiences with the regulatory processes which we’ve found to be extremely thorough and evidence based,” he said.

The post Canadian plant approval process lengthy but worthwhile appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

That was the message coming out of a discussion on a pair of controversial royalty schemes at the recent Alberta Federation of Agriculture AGM.

“We haven’t endorsed either of the two models presented yet — we feel that there hasn’t been enough consultation,” outgoing Alberta Wheat chair Kevin Bender said at the meeting.

“Farmers need to be convinced there’s value if there’s a fee charged to them.”

Earlier this month, Alberta Wheat, Alberta Barley, and their sister organizations in Saskatchewan and Manitoba sent a joint letter to federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay saying there was little farmer support for two proposed royalty models and “more consultation including consideration of other options” is needed.

“When the consultations started, there was a lot of push-back from the farming community,” said Bender. “There was a lot of misunderstanding and lack of information on its part.

“We felt that maybe the consultations were brought out too quickly and not enough information was given out to farmers about what was potentially happening and the ideas going forward.”

More than two years of industry consultations produced the two royalty options that received a cool reception from farmers at meetings held across the Prairies earlier this winter. Currently, cereal growers only pay a royalty to variety developers when buying certified seed, a system the seed industry contends doesn’t generate enough revenue to encourage development of new varieties.

“It takes up to $1 million to bring a variety to market and that’s light,” Todd Hyra, SeCan’s business manager for Western Canada, told the meeting. “That’s a number I was using in the early ’90s. It’s probably like $5 million to $10 million to bring a cereal variety through a public breeding program.”

Royalties paid on certified seed don’t begin to cover that cost, said Hyra.

He used durum as an example, saying only about 10 to 12 per cent of annual plantings are from certified seed.

“Certified seed usage in Canada is not a really attractive story to try and attract investment from other parts of the world,” he said.

SeCan and three other major independent seed companies (Alliance Seed, Canterra Seeds, and FP Genetics) argue Prairie farmers need to “get the facts” on the two proposed royalty systems.

One is the end point royalty option that would see farmers pay a levy when they sold their cereal grain. The second, called a trailing royalty, would see farmers continue to pay a fee on certified seed but also one on seed saved for planting. Both options would only apply to varieties covered under UPOV ’91 plant breeders’ rights rules. Farmers could grow older varieties without paying royalties.

‘No pressure’ to act

Bender said Alberta Wheat has always believed in investing in research, particularly when it applies to varietal breeding.

“At the same time, we have always been advocates for farmers’ rights to save their seed and that is something that has come loudly and clearly from our community,” he said. “They want to maintain that right. That’s something that is coming from them, and we need to maintain that interest.

“But at the same time, we know more investment is needed. We see we are falling behind some of these other countries where they do have investment in it.”

Other options need to be considered, he said.

“We just feel we need to investigate this a bit more,” he said.

A senior Ag Canada official at the meeting said there is no rush to push through a royalty system.

“There’s no pressure to make a decision now,” said Holly Mayer. “There is a regulatory opening in 2020 when the regulations under the seed act and the plant breeders’ rights act will be open for updating. That is one window that can be used to make the regulatory changes that will allow one or any of these models to be implemented… it’s a window — it’s not a deadline that must be met.”

While many farmers have taken an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ view of the situation, there was general agreement a new approach is needed.

“The status quo doesn’t meet the objective of increasing overall investment,” said Mayer.

And the status quo isn’t what it was.

Agriculture Canada closed its cereal research station in Manitoba a few years ago, reduced its barley-breeding program (to focus on trait development), and stations such as Swift Current are producing far fewer varieties than they used to, Hyra said.

Given it takes a decade or more to produce a new variety, the cereal sector has to take a long-term view, he said.

“We want to make sure we have a strong future,” he said. “Think about that funnel, that those 10 to 12 years of products remain strong going forward.”

It is important to have both private and public breeders in Canada, he said.

Tricky equation

While the current system isn’t “broken,” that doesn’t mean change isn’t needed, said Richard Gray, an agricultural economist at the University of Saskatchewan.

“Right now, agriculture research is well funded,” said Gray. “But what happens after that? Is the next government going to be the same? Or the one after that?

“Where are we going to be in 10 or 20 years from now? Royalties aren’t going to fix it in the short run. But in the long run, we need to at least put things in place.”

However, it’s a tricky equation, he added.

For example, an infusion of private sector funding might prompt both Ottawa and farmers to cut back.

“There’s always a possibility that if more money is coming in, the government can change its mind and reduce funds,” he said. “If producers are asked to pay an end point royalty, they can be less likely to contribute to producer checkoffs, which results in lower producer investment.”

That would not only shrink the pot of money for breeding new varieties, but could see large multinational seed companies gain excessive market power like they have over soybeans, corn, and canola, he said.

“As a farmer, I hear that argument often,” said Bender. “We don’t want to see wheat go down the same path as canola.”

But Hrya said that’s unlikely.

“Wheat is a bulky crop. It needs to be grown locally, sold locally, and processed locally,” he said.

Gray offered two recommendations.

“I think producer groups need to come together and get some direction to this. Without direction, change happens even slower,” he said.

Secondly, producers should consider a way to be directly involved in variety development, such as creating some form of private structure, he said.

“We need to think about government matching non-refundable producer levies,” said Gray.

It’s a good time to be approaching government with this sort of plan because it views agriculture as an “innovation engine” and is willing to invest public dollars, he added.

And Ottawa is open to considering alternative options, Mayer suggested.

“For now, what we’re going forward with is talking about the two models that were developed and how they would work,” she said. “But no decisions have been made.”

Agriculture Canada will conduct online consultations beginning in February and this will be followed by another set of formal consultations, she said.

– With staff files

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