Reading Time: 4 minutes In what many believe will be a turning point for agriculture here, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has legalized the growth and marketing of crop varieties developed with gene editing. That has fired up Jason Lenz’s imagination about the technology’s impact on food waste and food security — and also on flea beetles. “Food security […] Read more
Green light for gene editing heralds new age in farming
New guidance from Ottawa puts gene-edited varieties on par with their conventionally bred cousins
There’s lots of seed choices — and approaches to picking them
Some farmers consult, some decide on their own, and others react to what just happened
Reading Time: 4 minutes Are you happy with the seed varieties you chose this year? More importantly, is your approach to picking varieties working for you? Seed selection tends to be a very linear game. Seed companies typically contact seed growers with new varieties that may perform well and appeal to their customers. From there, the seed growers will […] Read more
Wheat varieties to keep an eye on
A few that growers expect to do well in the coming years
Reading Time: 2 minutes Wheat varieties are a little like the pop music charts: There are always new hot stars, and fading ones. Yes, there are some long-running chart toppers — take a bow, Stettler and CDC Go — but the list is constantly changing. Go back to 2013 and Harvest was running just behind Stettler for top spot. […] Read more
Canada ratifies UPOV ’91 seed treaty
Canadian crop commodity groups are hailing the federal government’s move to ratify Canada’s participation in the international UPOV ’91 treaty as a signal the country is “open for national and international investment.” Canada’s representatives to the World Trade Organization, on Friday in Geneva, deposited the government’s “instrument of ratification” for the 1991 Act of the […] Read more
Streamlined variety registration system set to launch in 2016
A streamlined system would allow new varieties to hit the market sooner, but less performance testing sparks concerns
Reading Time: 3 minutes A new variety registration system could be in place and fully operational by next year — if the players in the value chain can agree on doing away with the current three-part system. “The system needs to be efficient, it needs to be transparent, and it needs to be predictable,” said Erin Armstrong, director of […] Read more
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