Frank Robinson started at the U of A in 1986, specializing in poultry production and physiology. He’s a longtime believer in “experiential” learning.

To celebrate Robinson’s teaching style and legacy, a group of interested individuals came together to create Frank Robinson Youth Academy for Nature, Environment and Feeding the World (FRYA). The official opening was celebrated during a reception at the University of Alberta this spring.

“We’ve long been supporters of the programs that seize upon the opportunity to provide hands-on experiential learning so the students and teachers can relate to what is being taught in the classroom and bring it to the world of work,” said Eric Newell, chancellor emeritus (2004-2008), and a member of the Newell Family Foundation, a major donor to the program. Plans for FRYA have been in development since December 2022. Newell said he and his family see the value of internships and workshops, which can be a stepping stone to a rewarding career.

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“We can’t gloss over the work that Frank Robinson has been doing with the university programs like Heifer in your Tank and the very successful Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences (ALES) mini-internship programs. The outcome of all this is students getting a tangible work experience to put on their resumés, and in most cases, receive confirmation that their learning is relevant. A very high percentage of them get their start in careers because of it.”

Newell said Robinson is widely known and respected as an inspirational voice for youth and students. “These unique, inspirational people like Frank Robinson… can take interesting experiences and make them awesome. They just inspire a huge passion for learning. It is a huge factor in making for a good student experience.”

He said FRYA’s creation is a well-deserved recognition for Robinson. It will focus on education and building youth futures as well as supporting young Canadian leaders and engaging them in real-world issues.

In addition to the ALES mini-internship program, the academy will include activities for students from kindergarten to Grade 12. They will receive hands-on learning, not just in agriculture, but in forestry, agri-foods and environmental sciences.

The ‘spark moment’

Robinson took the podium at the event and talked about the “spark moment,” when things shift and people get a new understanding of their career opportunities.

“Do you think the next generation will have the same diversity of experiences that you have? COVID kind of messed things up. People did a lot more things online and there was a lot less human interaction. We’ve cut out a lot of opportunities for experiential learning due to budget cuts. I just worry that if we aren’t working hard to make more initiatives.”

Robinson noted the development of There’s a Heifer in Your Tank program, which was part of Animal Science 200. Students had to answer questions about agriculture and explain the answers to the public. Over 10 years, 1,000 students completed the program. Presentations for the There’s a Heifer in Your Tank were held at the University of Alberta, as well as at communities all over rural Alberta.

The mini-internship program began in 2016 when a student lamented that she could not get a summer job in agriculture because she had no experience. Robinson put together a three-day program that ran during fall and spring reading weeks. Two interns were placed at a farm, in government offices or in other places where they could gain experience.

Since the fall of 2016, 995 students have participated in the mini-internships. The program helped students gain confidence, gave them new contacts and experiences and helped them network and gain summer employment. The mini-internships are now being handled by two staff, Vicky Horn and Allie Dunlop. Horn is more knowledgeable about agriculture, while Dunlop has a background in environmental sciences.

Several goals

FRYA chair Susan Schafers, a former egg farmer, said the organization has several goals. One is promoting food security. The second is building connections with youth and nature.

“We want to make sure that we are supporting and enhancing cultural diversity in the agricultural and environmental sectors. And we want to have some of these hands-on experiential learning opportunities that have youth consider careers in agriculture and the environment.”

Schafers said the mini-internships will be the flagship of FRYA. Educational programs have been developed at the dairy unit and at the Pig Science Centre on the University of Alberta’s south campus farm. There are also plans to create an educational program for students to work with poultry. FRYA will interface between a university and science setting, and figure out the best practices to teach to students, teachers, resource people and industry people.

“We want to encourage teachers and help them if there are ideas about how to teach students creatively to develop a spark moment. That’s what we want to do and that’s what FRYA is going to be doing,” Schafers said, noting that Robinson is slowly transitioning to retirement.

“I think the organization was formed to really take and build on Frank’s legacy. How can we continue all the work he started, continue it on in a structured way, in a way that could be more sustainable financially?”

The group has several donors aside from the Newell Family Foundation, and plans to apply for federal funding. “We’re in the starting phase. We’re developing a work plan for the next two to three years, trying to figure out some programming that would happen in the spring and in the summer over at south campus,” Schafers said.

Since the organization is so new, there are also a lot of logistics to figure out. FRYA hopes to partner with organizations outside of animal agriculture.

“Having the breadth of industry, you’re not just focused on primary agriculture. We want to open the whole continuum that is about science, nature and feeding the world. There are so many facets to that. I think we’re just starting,” Schafers said.

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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.

The researchers are using cold plasma, which in this case was created by electrical discharge at atmospheric pressure. One of the most common uses is in florescent lighting, which creates light with little heat.

Cold plasma is the fourth state of matter, alongside solid, liquid and gas. It’s the most common form of matter in the universe, but it’s mainly found in stars.

“From the gas state, (matter) can be changed to a fourth state, which is called plasma. This plasma consists of electrons, ions, and ultraviolet light,” said Ehsan Feizollahi, a researcher who did his PhD on cold plasma.

In the food industry, it has been investigated as an antimicrobial treatment in fruits, vegetables and some meat products.

Clean up

At the University of Alberta, researchers have found a way to decontaminate grain damaged by mycotoxins, while also boosting seed germination. They chose two major mycotoxins, deoxynivalenol and zeralenone, which are both commonly found in wheat, barley and oats.

Mycotoxins are produced by fungi. Deoxynivalenol is produced by fusarium. The fungi produce mycotoxins in humid and warm conditions. Mycotoxins are not good for either human or animal health when consumed. In people they can cause diarrhea, nausea, headaches, brain and kidney damage, cancer and even death. Animals experience lower feed intake and other health effects.

Cold plasma technology can allow the food processing and livestock feed industries to create more effective, efficient ways to process grains that are safe for consumption, said Feizollahi. The researchers focussed mainly on barley.

“One of the methods was by treating normal air and creating plasma, and then treating grains using cold plasma treated air,” said Feizollahi.

Cold plasma can also be mixed with water, so researchers used plasma-treated water to steep grain, a process used in the malting industry.

The test showed that air plasma treatment degraded DON mycotoxin by 54.4 per cent after 10 minutes of treatment, and plasma activated water steeping reduced DON by 58.4 per cent.

“We substituted the normal water with plasma treated water and we used that water to treat barley grains. We noticed that treating barley grains with plasma water boosted the germination and resulted in the degradation of deoxynivalenol,” Feizollahi said.

“By treating these grains, we can prevent financial loss to the industry and prevent health effects to animals and humans that are using these grains.”

An estimated 25 per cent of grains in the world are contaminated by mycotoxins. Removing them would result in less waste and better outcomes for human and animal health.

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High temperature treatment is ineffective against mycotoxins. They can be degraded using chemicals, but those have environmental effects and leave residues.

“Cold plasma is one of the methods that is a green method,” he said. “It doesn’t use any kind of chemicals. It doesn’t leave any kind of residue on the product. Also, we can create cold plasma by just using air and electricity. The electricity can be obtained from renewable resources, so it is a green technology.

“My other colleagues in the lab, they are working on different bacteria, like salmonella and e.coli.”

Fast acting

Feizollahi compared cold plasma to a sanitation material that can eliminate food borne microorganisms and mycotoxins. One benefit is the short treatment time.

“It depends on the type of mycotoxin that you want to treat, but if you want to use it for steeping, it usually takes one minute to an hour.”

As well, treatment doesn’t reduce grain quality or change beta-glucan, protein levels, water content or physical characteristics.

“The plasma has the side benefit of decontaminating the water used in the steeping process. It can kill all the other microorganisms as well in the water. We don’t need to use any kind of antibacterial in the water if you want to use this water somewhere else. We don’t need to treat it with any kind of chemicals,” he said.

The technology is open to licensing through the University of Alberta and researchers have applied for a patent.

The next step is to try the technique on a larger scale for industrial use. Feizollahi said the researchers hope to try the technology at the pilot plant scale and see whether cold plasma has the same effects.

*Update: the article was updated to correct the type of pressure that was used (atmospheric) to generate plasma and the percentage of reduction in mycotoxins that were measured.

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“My goal is to get them dirty, and I get them really dirty,” said Gorim, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta and the Western Grains Research Foundation chair in cropping systems.

Her field crop agronomy course was created to fill a gap in the university’s ag program.

“We had no core agronomy course and the industry had said the program did not have experiential learning attached to it,” said Gorim, noting the course begins with an extended one-week-long field trip.

“This is not a ‘fun’ field trip. This is a ‘getting dirty’ field trip. It’s a combination of teaching students hard core agronomy and exposure to field experience.”

Many students were taking courses without setting foot on farms, including those from other countries who came here to learn about Canadian farming methods, she said.

“Most of the students come from countries where they are seen as experts,” said Gorim. “They come from government scholarships from those countries. It is not fair for them to come and watch videos.”

Students can see farming activities on the U of A’s south campus in Edmonton, but that is not adequate, she added.

“They need to see what a combine does, what a farmer in Canada drives, and climb on the tractor and see it and see all the processes, how the combine cuts through the crop, and where does the crop go,” she said. “Those are the things that I want them to touch and see.”

That includes exercises in identifying issues such as nutrient deficiency and clubroot, learning about seed treatments, how different seeding depths affect plant development, and seeing production practices such as grain drying.

The field tour stops included research projects conducted by the Gateway Research Organization in Westlock and Battle River Research Group near Forestburg, as well as the university’s Breton Plots, the nearly century-old research facility in Brazeau County. The students also visited an irrigated operation and seed retailer near Bow Island.

Getting to various parts of the province is important, said Gorim.

“That’s really intentional. Students who grew up on farms in central Alberta have no clue that there are people who grow up on farms in the same province growing crops in irrigation systems,” she said.

“I am surprised that students will get degrees from the same province, and they don’t even know what is happening in the province.”

The course attracts students from both city and farm. In her first year of teaching the course, Gorim had five urban students and two rural, although in the second year, 12 of 14 students came from farms.

Although she brings in “quite a number of agronomists and farmers to the classroom,” she said nothing matches learning in the field. For example, looking at photos of insect damage in a textbook is far different than what is encountered in the field.

“In the field, it’s not that clear cut,” she said. “This makes them work and learn.”

Of course, students have a bit of help — from one of the top bug experts in the province. Boyd Mori, assistant professor in agricultural and ecological entomology, joins the field trip and shows the students how to sweep for insects and identify them.

Farmers are also big part of the curriculum. At a stop near Camrose, the students meet with a group of producers that Gorim has invited to participate.

When producers come to the classroom, they might talk about bookkeeping or how to track profitability or about what’s involved when moving from traditional conventional agriculture to regenerative farming or about technology that’s used on farms.

But hearing the personal experiences of farmers resonates, said Gorim.

“I’ve got a lot of encouraging feedback from the students, from the farmers, from the scientific community,” she said. “This is agronomy. It impacts the students and the farmers. These will be their future employers.

“I think getting this in the classroom puts them in a better position.”

The course has received grants from the Western Grains Research Foundation, Alberta Wheat and Barley and Alberta Canola because funding is needed to support the field trip portion of the course, said Gorim.

The post Farmers and field trips provide something textbooks can’t offer appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

An eclectic panel of experts offered very different answers to that question at a recent forum hosted by the University of Alberta.

How we grow food and even what we eat is probably going to change, but the solutions to today’s problems will require creative thinking and money, said Alison Sunstrum, a venture capitalist and a pioneer in using ag data.

“It takes policy, it takes commitment and it also takes financing,” said Sunstrum, who co-founded one of the first companies to use RFID tags to measure feed efficiency in livestock.

“It also takes us as consumers demanding safe food and less waste. But I think it takes a community to drive the change that we need to see.”

That has been the impetus behind cellular agriculture, also known as ‘cultured meat,’ said Isha Datar, an Edmonton native who is a pioneer in the field and heads a non-profit institute that funds research into the technology.

“It is very real,” said Datar. “This field has grown to literally millions of dollars in investment. Hundreds of companies from around the world believe that growing food from cells is a really important part of our food strategy in a climate change world.”

Learning how to produce more food in different ways will drive change, she said.

“Growing meat from cells is one of those ways, but it’s not just meat. Even more real than meat from cells are things like dairy products or egg protein or other food types that would traditionally come from animals that can be grown by different cell types.”

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Consumers might also see unexpected foods or those from unexpected places, said U of A professor William Shotyk, a soil scientist who runs a high-tech lab for studying “trace metals cycling” in soil, water, air and plants.

Part of his work involves looking at traditional Indigenous diets. During a study in the lower Athabasca watershed, he found that wild berries are vitamin-rich and also contain surprisingly high levels of minerals.

“It was absolutely fascinating,” he said. “The berries are just full of essential micronutrients like manganese, iron, copper and nickel. What’s even more remarkable scientifically is (the soils they came from) are the most copper-deficient soils on the planet.

“So how do they get their copper? All of the berries that we’ve analyzed – cranberries, blueberries – they all have about the same amount of copper. So the planet must have a way of regulating copper uptake.”

Shotyk has also analyzed beaver meat.

“The micronutrients required for human health include chromium, nickel, copper, zinc, iron and manganese. The beaver was rich in all of them,” he said. “Barbecued beaver loins turned out to be the most delicious meat I’ve ever had.”

However, beef production is a key part of global food security and while methane emissions must be addressed, cattle are vital to grassland preservation, said Gleise Medeiros da Silva, a beef nutrition expert and assistant professor at U of A.

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Cattle production is under threat because of extreme weather such as last year’s drought, said Silva, who last year was awarded a chair position funded by a $3 million grant from the Beef Cattle Research Council and the Hays family.

“We need to find solutions to fight climate change,” she said. “We can’t just think about the future but also the present. We are already facing some of these consequences.”

Panellists also praised what has been accomplished in food production.

“From 1960 until now we produced double the food,” said Sunstrum. “What we did was amazing and it was science-driven.”

However, global agriculture has had “an incredible impact on the planet” and demands a different approach, she said. That will require both creative disruption and the innovation that comes from cross-discipline collaboration.

“We need every biologist, every geneticist, every soil scientist, every beaver scientist – everybody that we can possibly deploy to solve our problems,” she said.

But again, money is key and several panelists said that tried-and-true sources of research funding, notably from government, won’t be enough to tackle the needs of a changing agricultural world.

“Just knocking on the door of the federal government isn’t the answer,” said Shotyk. “We have been knocking at the door for a long time and those on the other side of the door just haven’t heard.”

The post Change is coming, but the options are many, say food experts appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“My favourite part of the job is being a part of the farmer’s operation from crop planning all winter to putting seed in the ground, spraying it and taking it off in the fall,” said Rinas, who became a sales agronomist with Nutrien Ag Solutions after earning a crop science degree last year.

“I also help with problem solving in the field, be it insect, disease or weed issues.”

She was a presenter at a recent Ag for Life online workshop aimed at showing young women in grades 9 to 12 (and those taking a post-secondary program) that there are host of ag STEM careers – those in science, technology, engineering or math.

“Women make up less than 25 per cent of the people who are employed in STEM careers,” said Irena Ceko, marketing coordinator with Ag for Life, a Calgary-based non-profit focused on educating youth about the agriculture and food sectors.

“We wanted to provide some support and opportunity, especially for young women who are trying to figure out their paths and their passion. We developed this opportunity for them to network, connect with others in the industry and see if there’s anything in agriculture that sparks interest for them.”

That spark came early for Rinas, who grew up on a grain farm near Busby.

“This is where my passion for everything agriculture began and has since intensified,” she wrote in an email. “When I’m not working at Nutrien, I’m at the farm helping out, especially at seeding and harvest.”

Her message to young women is that there are a host of opportunities.

“There are more and more women coming to terms with the fact that we can work, and we do belong, in the agriculture industry,” said Rinas, who started as a crop scout for Nutrien while attending the University of Alberta.

“We are smart and detail-oriented, making us great farmers. I strongly believe women are capable of doing everything men can do on the farm.”

The ag sector has opportunities for those seeking a career that’s interesting, challenging and rewarding, she added.

“Agriculture is constantly evolving and advancing as technology gets better. It’s an exciting industry to work in. Agriculture is also a very stable industry to work in and there is always a selection of jobs available.”

The online workshop was held earlier this month but Ag for Life is planning to hold two per year (in March and November) and has created a website (feedyourfuturecareer.ca) with a number of resources.

The latter includes a workbook that looks at STEM career options, helps find ones that fit the individual, and lists degree and diploma programs in Alberta.

“It’s all about self-development, self-exploration and finding that perfect fit for yourself, while exploring different roles and connecting with different industry professionals,” said Ceko.

The website (as well as agricultureforlife.ca/careers-in-ag) offers profiles of people and their agricultural careers.

A key message is that there are many options.

“Agriculture is such a vast field. You could be a chemist, you could be a biologist, you could be a veterinarian, there are roles in automation,” said Ceko.

“Technology is a really big part of agriculture. So here are a lot of career opportunities and really exciting roles for women to step into. It goes well beyond farming and ranching, especially in today’s world.”

Holding the workshops online makes it easier for people to attend but the organizers have also tried to create networking opportunities.

“One of my favourite parts of the whole networking event is the whole section of the day that is devoted to people asking questions,” said Ceko.

But perhaps the biggest message is that the door is open.

“It’s important for women to encourage each other that they can do it,” said Rinas. “It can be intimidating to get into as historically, it was a male-dominated industry.

“But from my experience, if you know what you’re talking about and show care and passion for what you do, farmers will respect you whether you’re a man or a woman.”

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Spot-treating soil with the mineral reduced the overall occurrence and severity of the disease by 35 to 91 per cent, growth experiments showed.

The finding, published in the Canadian Journal of Plant Pathology, could give farmers an option for managing clubroot, alongside current use of resistant varieties.

Lime has traditionally been used to manage clubroot in related plants, such as cabbages for market gardens, but not on a large scale in canola crops.

“Genetics are our first line of defence, but plant resistance can erode or break down, so we need to find every possible option to help control the clubroot pathogen in what is an important cash crop for Canada,” says researcher Nicole Fox.

As a non-genetic management practice, liming treatments could help combat all strains of clubroot in canola, adds Fox, who conducted the study to earn a Master of Science in plant biosystems from the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences.

Spot treatments could help control contaminated areas of a field or stem the spread of clubroot into a new field.

The lime works by neutralizing the highly acidic soil preferred by clubroot, reducing the likelihood of spore germination and plant infection.

One of the first studies to test hydrated lime in the field in Canada, the research also showed the product was more effective at managing clubroot in canola than granulated limestone, another form of lime more commonly used to treat agricultural soil.

Applying moderate to high amounts of the powdered lime resulted in canola plants that were still productive even if infected by clubroot. The plants also released fewer spores of the clubroot pathogen.

Lowering acidity levels also increases the soil’s general health, an important benefit to liming, considering Alberta has about one million acres of strongly acidic and 4.5 million acres of moderately acidic cropland soils, Fox notes.

But hydrated lime’s effectiveness does hinge on certain factors, like the interval between application and seeding, so it needs fine-tuning before it can become a practical tool, says U of A plant pathologist and study co-author Stephen Strelkov, who supervised the research.

“While lime showed good potential for clubroot management, the results varied. Sometimes the treatments provided very good control; other times they didn’t. So, we need further research to work out some details.”

Canola bred to be genetically resistant is still the most effective tool against clubroot, Strelkov adds, but options like hydrated lime could help improve the “durability of resistance and overall sustainability” of disease management.

“There may be situations, if the efficacy of lime is consistent and the costs of application reasonable, that it could be used on a larger scale.”

The research was funded by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canola Council of Canada, Alberta Canola, SaskCanola and the Manitoba Canola Growers via the Canadian Agricultural Partnership program. In-kind support was also received from the U of A and Alberta Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Economic Development.

Bev Betkowski is a communications associate for the University of Alberta.

The post Lime shows promise for controlling clubroot in canola appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“One thing biologists have noticed is there are certain varieties of wheat that, for whatever reason … where the midge will not lay eggs,” said James Harynuk, a professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Alberta.

“But they also know this wheat will protect other plants nearby. Whatever it is, there’s some molecule or collection of molecules being generated by this variety of wheat that are being released into the air.”

Harynuk and his colleagues are trying to identify the midge-repelling molecules. The next step is to determine the genes responsible for generating them. Once identified, they can be bred into new strains of wheat.

“Once you have this wheat that is giving good yields and protecting itself from the wheat midge, you can mix that in with your crop, because it protects the plants around it,” he said. “And then the rest of your wheat can be another variety that produces high yields.”

During an average year on the Prairies, wheat midge can cause up to $60 million in crop damage. That number can jump to $300 million in a bad year, said Harynuk.

“Wheat midge is the number one insect pest threatening wheat crops across Western Canada. They damage wheat by laying their eggs in the kernels to hatch their larvae.”

He said new wheat varieties may be available soon.

“Our goal is that by this time next year, we should know what the genetic markers are. And then it’s just a question of how quickly plant breeders can incorporate those genes into new varieties. It’s not going to be that far off.”

Depending on the molecules identified by researchers, deploying molecule emitters in fields could be a Band-Aid solution for dealing with wheat midge outbreaks until new varieties can be bred, said Harynuk, although he noted this could add labour costs.

“You might need 30 or 40 of these things per quarter section,” he said. “Yes, it’s a pain and a lot of work to do that. It’s an added cost, but maybe it’s not as bad as losing an entire field if there’s a bad wheat midge outbreak. It’s possible there will be an emergency Band-Aid solution available for next season.”

Working with Harynuk are Boyd Mori and A. Paulina de la Mata at the University of Alberta as well as Alejandro Costamagna, Curt McCartney and Chaminda Weeraddana at the University of Manitoba.

Results Driven Agriculture Research (RDAR) provided $660,000 for the research, with another $697,000 (in cash and in-kind support) coming from several groups including the University of Manitoba and the Canadian Wheat Cluster (which is administered by Alberta Wheat and its sister organizations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan).

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“There are increasingly bee breeders who are operating locally and quite innovatively to provide queens where they are needed,” said Olav Rueppell, a University of Alberta professor who is an expert in honeybee biology.

“There might be a historical reason for why we are re-queening all the colonies before the spring but maybe there is a possible way to re-queen them before the winter.”

Alberta’s large beekeeping sector is highly dependent on imported honeybee queens, partly because there is little time to raise stock and distribute them during the short beekeeping season, he noted.

However, queens and other bee stock are often imported from southern regions, where they can be raised early and shipped very easily.

“That raises the question of whether those bees that have been bred and selected for success in other parts of the world, under very different conditions, are best for our local conditions here,” he said.

Rueppell was recently awarded $437,000 to study this question and other matters regarding bee health and vitality — a sign of how important the bee sector is for Prairie farmers.

Although honeybees pollinate a wide range of plants (such as fruit trees, veggies and pulses), they are key for canola production. And while native pollinators also play a critical role, studies have concluded honeybees can raise canola yields by double digits.

Rueppell’s study will look at three different stocks of bees (one local and two from stocks commonly imported here) in three different regions (near Edmonton, Grande Prairie and Lethbridge).

“That will tell us whether there are interactions, whether one type or one stock might be doing better in one area than another,” he said. “This particular project is not only about comparing the different stocks. It’s about how we can predict, at an individual level, the success of a queen.”

The three-year project will include identifying and examining genetic markers to see if they are better predictors than looking at phenotypic (that is, observable) traits, with the queens being the key focus.

“The queen is the heart and soul of the bee colony,” said Rueppell.

Researchers will also be studying colony level markers and assessing behavioural traits of the honeybees, such as how they clean their hive and react to substances that can cause brood diseases. Three collaborators (from AgCanada, the Alberta Beekeepers Commission and the University of Lethbridge) will monitor bee colony success, disease incidence, population buildup and other traits. They’ll be particularly interested in which stocks have the best overwintering success, and will also be doing a deep dive into the genetic makeup of the bees.

“Genetic analysis is quite involved. We’ll be looking at the whole genome of these stocks and compare them for genetic markers that have been previously identified.”

Although Alberta is Canada’s top honey producer, there hasn’t been a lot of genetic research done on bees here, but a major Genome Canada project has identified several good genetic markers, said Rueppell.

The research could also lead to a shift in bee selection. Along with production ability, bees are often selected for gentleness — and therefore less likely to sting their beekeeper.

But the study hopes to gain insight into whether, in the bee world, nice guys finish last.

The idea is that more aggressive bees might actually be ones that are “more sensitive to stimuli.”

“That alert mechanism may be a good defence mechanism against disease because they smell better or they notice something is wrong,” said Rueppell.

“We can optimize both traits if they are at the same gene or locus. But if they are independent and we can tweak one without the other, we can try to optimize multiple traits at the same time. That’s a more long-term goal.”

A more immediate one is to find “top colonies” that overwinter well and provide beekeepers with tests they can use to assess the quality and predict the survivability of their colonies.

“You can manage your quality accordingly,” he said. “If we know a colony is high quality, maybe you don’t need to treat pre-emptively against varroa mites or against other brood diseases — they are already genetically good enough to deal with that themselves.”

Having more robust bees is a lot better than “blanket treating everything all the time,” he added.

“Ultimately, I hope it will lead to a reduction in the cost of beekeeping because those chemical treatments are costly and labour intensive,” said Rueppell. “If we have stock that can take care of themselves, that would be the best solution.”

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“It’s a really elegant story about how both breeding and the fundamental science of why cadmium moves in the durum plant actually came together to provide a solution,” said University of Alberta researcher Neil Harris.

That story begins in the 1990s, when the Codex Alimentarius Commission (which sets international standards for food production) began exploring regulations for cadmium in food products, including grains such as durum wheat and rice.

Cadmium is a natural contaminant in the soil that can accumulate in plant tissues — and as a toxin in the human body if people eat foods with high levels of it.

Compared to food such as rice, sunflower seeds, and spinach, durum doesn’t actually have particularly high levels of cadmium — rice, for example, can have twice as much. But both are staple foods eaten in large quantities, so they pose the most risk to humans.

The Canadian durum varieties widely grown in the 1990s had high enough levels of cadmium that they would have exceeded limits being proposed at the time.

“There was a lot of concern amongst the durum wheat industry about the possibility of blockage of our exports of Canadian durum wheat,” said Harris.

So Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientists did a survey of cadmium levels and found a surprisingly big range in common varieties. Further study traced the variation back to the germplasm used for breeding.

“This really opened up two questions: Can we use that material to breed for low-cadmium durum wheat varieties? And can we understand why some varie­ties have high levels of cadmium while others are low?” said Harris.

The breeding question turned out to be easy to answer.

“The heritability — or the ease at which we can breed this low-cadmium trait into varieties with desirable agronomic traits — actually proved to be quite straightforward,” said Harris. “It appeared to be connected to a single gene that was easy to breed with.

“So they set about breeding for low-cadmium durum wheat, and they brought about success relatively quickly.”

By 2005, nearly all Canadian durum varieties had been converted to low-cadmium lines, and low-cadmium accumulation is now mandatory criteria for registering new varieties.

“So in effect, cadmium accumulation in Canadian durum wheat varieties is actually a solved problem,” said Harris. “Our breeding programs have eliminated the high-cadmium trait, and all of the varieties coming out of our breeding programs are now low-cadmium lines. They’ve removed the risk of possible export restrictions based on cadmium levels in grain.

“So it proved to be quite an easy problem to solve.”

Answering the ‘why’

But figuring out why some varie­ties were high in cadmium while others weren’t took a lot longer.

In the early 2000s, researchers began looking at the mechanism by which cadmium moves in plants.

“We established that the main difference between the high-cadmium varieties and the low-cadmium varieties was that the low-cadmium varieties tend to accumulate a lot more cadmium in their roots and not transport it up the shoot to the grain,” said Harris.

“So therefore, you get low-cadmium grain.”

However, that was only a partial answer. It was with the release of the durum wheat genome in 2019, that researchers could connect with transport mechanism with the gene responsible for causing cadmium to accumulate in the grain.

“As it turns out, the high-cadmium varieties have a mutation in one of the genes that causes cadmium to be held in the grain,” said Harris. “When the mutation is present, the roots don’t hold the cadmium. It passes into the shoots and the grain.”

Using genetic markers, breeders can now easily screen germplasm for this defective gene.

“So when we screened all the available germplasm in Canada using this marker for this defective gene — HMA3 — those with high levels of cadmium in the grain had the defective gene, and those with low levels of cadmium in the grain had the functional gene,” said Harris.

“Essentially, it provided a marker that would allow breeders to rapidly screen their germplasm.”

And that’s a very handy tool when trying to breed the varieties of tomorrow.

“By adding a genetic marker for those traits, these can be screened as seedlings, enabling a much quicker breeding process,” said Harris.

“And not only did we find a way of screening for low cadmium in Canada, we also provided the means for screening low cadmium in all durum wheat germplasm worldwide.”

As a result, the amount of cadmium in durum grain being exported by Canada is half of what it was in the 1990s — and well below the limits set for cadmium contamination.

“It’s a solved problem because there are no longer high-cadmium varieties in Canadian durum wheat breeding, and all the modern cultivars that have been released are all low cadmium,” said Harris.

“It worked out really nicely, although it did take quite a long time.”

Cracking the Code

Genomics is changing farming in a host of different ways. Glacier FarmMedia journalists did several stories on genomics, designer genes and other genetic breakthroughs as part of the ‘Seeding the Future‘ multimedia project. They can be found at gfmdigital.com or by clicking the ‘Seeding the Future‘ image below.

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