With public agricultural research under pressure, emerging scientist Ben Erickson explains what Canada must do to keep young plant breeders—and their expertise—at home.
As Canada scales back public agricultural research, young scientists are facing questions that extend beyond their next job. Is there still a place for them to build a career here—or will they have to look elsewhere?
In a new episode of the Seed World podcast, Ben Erickson reflects on that uncertainty and what it could mean for the future of Canadian plant breeding.
See, he wasn’t planning on going back to school.
After graduating from the University of Guelph with distinction, Erickson joined the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) soybean breeding program in Ottawa, Ont., spending two years working on food-grade soybeans, climate-smart cropping systems and genomic breeding tools.
Then, in 2025, major cuts to AAFC research facilities were announced to meet federal budget saving targets.
“This was the event that influenced me to return to my studies,” he says.
For Erickson, the cuts ultimately led to a new opportunity. But his experience also raises a larger question: when early-career researchers encounter fewer paths forward in Canada, where will they go to pursue their work?
Today, Erickson is pursuing a master’s of science at McGill University, tackling one of soybean breeding’s most persistent problems: developing durable resistance to Sclerotinia stem rot.
White mould is among Canada’s most economically damaging diseases in soybean, canola and pulse crops, with severe outbreaks causing yield losses of 50% or more. For breeders, the challenge is finding plants that remain resistant against genetically diverse pathogen populations.
Rather than screening soybean lines against a single fungal isolate, he is evaluating 34 lines against 10 genetically distinct isolates collected across the country. Combined with genomic data, the work could identify stable resistance and provide breeders with useful parent lines, candidate genes and improved screening methods—the kind of expertise Canada will need to retain as agricultural challenges grow more complex.
When Tanya Copley hired him at the Centre de recherche sur les grains inc. (CÉROM), she knew about his extensive field experience but was struck by how quickly he adapted to laboratory work.
McGill professor Jacqueline Bede sees broader potential in his work. She says Erickson’s “matrix” approach — testing soybean resistance against multiple pathogen isolates from across Canada — could generate insights useful not only for soybean breeding, but for disease-resistance research in other crops.
Whether researchers like Erickson will be able to build their futures in Canada remains an open question. In the podcast, he speaks candidly about the changing research landscape, what continues to draw him to public plant breeding and how far he may be willing to go to find his next opportunity.
Listen to the full Seed World podcast episode to hear Erickson’s perspective on what Canada stands to lose—and what might convince the next generation of plant breeders to stay.
Ben Erickson is the fourth in our series of 7 Future Builders of Plant Breeding. Read all about Yue Yu, Shruti Kashyap and Luke Dojack!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
