Public Plant Breeding in Canada Isn’t About Out-Breeding Anyone
The wheat seeded on a Prairie farm next spring was crossed, on average, 13 years ago. Roughly 80 per cent of Canadian wheat acres go into varieties developed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, according to the Canadian Wheat Research Coalition’s February review. So the argument over what public plant breeding in Canada is supposed to do is not a policy abstraction. It sets what is in the bin in 2037.
That argument now has a fiscal edge. The 2025 Comprehensive Expenditure Review set out a 15 per cent reduction to AAFC’s budget between 2026 and 2029, including a $112-million cut in 2026-27 and roughly 665 fewer positions by 2028-29. AAFC’s own 2026-27 Departmental Plan describes reducing certain science activities where a more streamlined approach can be taken, or where capacity exists elsewhere, in academia and industry. Producer groups, seed growers and rural municipalities have spent the winter objecting.
François Eudes is not making that objection. Eudes is director of research, development and technology for AAFC’s Science and Technology Branch in Alberta, and the department’s national science lead for breeding innovation and crop germplasm development. On this episode of On The Brink, he argues the public sector should narrow what it does, deliberately.
Public Plant Breeding in Canada, Repositioned
“It is very difficult to invest in all novel technologies and add this to classical breeding programs, and deliver results rapidly to producers when you work alone,” Eudes says. “That’s where collaboration means a lot.”
His proposed division of labour is specific. “For me, it’s also the role of the public sector to be able to focus public sector investment where the innovation starts in foundational science, taking that innovation into germplasm, advancing this Canadian germplasm, and making sure to give access to this germplasm to all the companies,” he says.
The downstream work stays with whoever can carry it. “The breeding programs are investing in developing the varieties that producers need, but they need a return on investment,” Eudes says. He does not treat that as a problem to be solved. He treats it as the reason the public sector should sit somewhere else on the chain.
He calls the shift repositioning. “Repositioning the role of the public sector is how we can also have a greater impact on the success of others,” he says. “We can bring our strength, our capacity, and concentrate the investment to more rapidly develop the tools that all the breeding programs can adopt.”
Foundational Science Is the Part Nobody Else Pays For
The one thing Eudes will not concede is the upstream. “We also need to maintain investment in foundational science and germplasm development, again, because this is where the innovations start,” he says.
That is the stage the CWRC review found still functional. The coalition’s February report put the critical gaps and risks elsewhere: in variety development, and in pre-market evaluation and testing, where insufficient capacity is limiting how many candidate varieties reach adaptation trials. The full review is available from CWRC.
The funding question underneath all of this is not new. Under Growing Forward and the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, public research money has increasingly been contingent on matching dollars from industry or producer groups, a difficult ask for crops with thin margins or small acreage. Pre-breeding and germplasm enhancement are harder still. The payoff is a decade or more out and it accrues to whoever eventually uses the material, which is close to a working definition of the investment a company with quarterly obligations will underfund.
A Window That May Not Stay Open
Eudes’ read on the moment is that something has shifted. “There is, in fact, a momentum that has built over the past few months, and I guess the challenge of the fiscal pressure at AAFC also contributed to bringing plant genetic improvement into many of the discussions, mobilizing all the stakeholders,” he says.
What he does state plainly is the risk. “I think what would worry me and others is to miss a good opportunity,” he says, “to miss the opportunity to turn this engagement into greater collaboration and move from a status quo where we have a number of constraints or limitations.”
That is the uncomfortable part of his position for anyone currently fighting the cuts. Eudes is describing a sector that has been mobilized and is now at risk of demobilizing back into an arrangement almost nobody defended while it was in place. On his framing, winning the funding argument and changing nothing structural would still count as the failure.
Subscribe To On The Brink
On the Brink is a cross-country storytelling project about plant breeding in Canada. The goal is to spark an open, multi-perspective, ongoing conversation about what’s possible, what’s at stake, and how to seize opportunities ahead. On the Brink releases new episodes every Wednesday. Watch Episode 6 featuring Andrew Campbell and subscribe to have future episodes delivered directly to your inbox.
More Episodes
Be Part of this Conversation
We need your help to grow and evolve this conversation!
- Nominate individuals you think should be part of the On the Brink video series. Know someone who would add to the conversation? Email us at OnTheBrink@seedworldgroup.com
- Help expand the conversation by liking and sharing weekly episodes across LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and Facebook.
