Genomics gets the attention, but collaboration among breeders, researchers, producers and seed companies could determine how quickly the technology delivers.

For years,  Canadian pulse breeders have watched genomic selection revolutionize crops such as corn, soybeans and canola while wondering when the technology would become practical for peas, lentils and other smaller-acreage crops.

The answer, it turns out, isn’t simply better science, but better collaboration.

A new national initiative involving Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), the Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS), the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre (CDC), private seed companies, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers (SPG) and Protein Industries Canada (PIC) is building a genomic selection platform designed to accelerate pea breeding. 

On its own, that’s an important development.

But viewed alongside two other recent announcements — a major expansion of GIFS’ genomics capacity and a new producer-supported lentil breeding partnership at the CDC — it begins to look like something much larger.

Together, they suggest Canada isn’t just adopting another breeding technology, but building the ecosystem needed to support the next generation of pulse breeding.

Beyond Better Genetics

Genomic selection uses DNA markers to predict which breeding lines are most likely to possess desirable traits long before years of field testing are complete. The technology allows breeders to make selection decisions earlier, shortening breeding cycles while improving the odds of finding superior varieties. 

The concept isn’t new. What’s new is making it work economically for pulse crops.

Building reliable prediction models requires enormous amounts of genomic and field-performance data collected across years and environments. Large global crops have generated those datasets through decades of investment. Pulse crops haven’t.

“Genomic prediction takes years to build,” says AAFC’s national research director Francois Eudes. “It requires massive amounts of data. Working on a single breeding program with limited replicated sites makes it very difficult to achieve the quality or volume of datasets required to have a very good predictive model.”

That’s why the project brings together organizations that would normally operate independently. Rather than each attempting to build its own prediction system, collaborators are pooling data and expertise to create a shared platform before competing through their own breeding programs. 

“The opportunity to bring those new tools that we use elsewhere into a crop like peas is a great opportunity for us to maintain the competitiveness of the crop,” Eudes says. 

Building Infrastructure, Not Just Varieties

The project is as much about infrastructure as it is about genetics. Private companies see immediate value because genomic prediction has become too expensive for individual organizations to build alone.

“For us to try and do this work on our own probably just wouldn’t be feasible,” says DL Seeds General Manager Chris Anderson. “Just the upfront investment alone means doing it ourselves would be difficult, to say the least.”

That philosophy is extending beyond the genomic selection project itself.

GIFS recently announced a $1.63-million investment from PrairiesCan to install an Illumina NovaSeq X Plus sequencing platform, significantly expanding its genomic sequencing capacity. Rather than serving a single breeding program, the platform is intended to support researchers and breeding organizations across Western Canada by producing genomic information faster and at greater scale.

Seen together, the two initiatives point toward a different approach to agricultural innovation. Instead of investing exclusively in individual breeding programs, governments and industry are increasingly investing in shared infrastructure that allows many breeding organizations to innovate more quickly.

The predictive models, sequencing capacity and datasets become common tools. The competition comes later through the varieties each breeding program develops.

Canada’s Advantage May Already Exist

Curtis Pozniak believes Canada has something many countries are trying to rebuild. The CDC director is frequently asked by researchers around the world how Canada’s public breeding system has remained so well connected. In many countries, he says, foundational research and applied breeding have become disconnected.

Canada has largely avoided that problem by maintaining close links between discovery science, variety development and commercialization. That interconnected system, he argues, should become even more important as breeding becomes increasingly dependent on genomics, digital tools and data science.

Rather than seeing public breeding, private breeding or other structural models as competing, Pozniak sees them as complementary parts of one innovation ecosystem. Pre-competitive research should remain collaborative. Variety development should remain competitive.

“There is a general consensus that there’s no single actor that can deliver optimal breeding alone,” he says.

Public breeding programs, he argues, continue to play a unique role by delivering varieties, crops, regions and long-term breeding priorities, even when they fall outside commercial priorities. They also pursue higher-risk research, train future plant breeders, and maintain long-term germplasm resources that deliver public-good outcomes that markets alone may not prioritize.

From Projects to Partnerships

Technology alone won’t determine whether Canada’s breeding system succeeds — stable investment and funding are equally important. Pozniak argues one of the greatest threats facing plant breeding is stop-and-start investment.

“Plant breeding is a long-term venture,” he says. “We need stable funding to support that.”

That philosophy is reflected in the CD’s newly announced lentil breeding partnership with SPG and APG.

Rather than funding individual research projects, the agreement combines operational support, producer input into breeding priorities and a royalty model designed to reinvest revenue back into future breeding. For Pozniak, that represents an important evolution.

Breeding programs require core funding to maintain long-term variety development, while research projects and industry partnerships help bring new science into those programs. He also argues that royalties generated through successful varieties should be reinvested directly into breeding, creating a more sustainable cycle of innovation. In fact, this is a policy of the CDC, where every royalty dollar returned to the centre is reinvested directly back to support breeding. 

The approach mirrors the genomic selection initiative itself. Both recognize that modern plant breeding depends on stable systems rather than one-off investments.

Breeding for a Different Marketplace

The collaborative model also reflects how Canada’s pulse industry is changing. For decades, breeding focused primarily on helping farmers produce higher yields and withstand disease and environmental stresses. Those priorities remain.

But Canada’s rapidly expanding processing sector increasingly requires varieties with traits tied to protein functionality, ingredient quality and end-use performance. That means processors are informing breeding discussions much earlier than they once were. 

“We’re seeing the value in understanding the priorities for those end users,” says Saskatchewan Pulse Growers Director of Research and Development Sherrilyn Phelps. “There are conversations happening between end users and breeders around specific targets or interests, which is really great to see.”

Eudes believes genomic prediction could also help breeders overcome one of pulse breeding’s long-standing challenges: increasing protein content without sacrificing yield.

“We could envision an increase in yield while we also increase the protein content,” he says. “That’s where you have additional power with genomic prediction.”

Trust Becomes Competitive Infrastructure

One word surfaced repeatedly throughout conversations about the genomic selection project: trust. Organizations that normally compete are sharing data, research investments and expertise before they compete in the marketplace. 

“I think something as an industry we need to consider is our appetite for risk,” Anderson says. “It requires an appetite for risk, but it does actually build trust and bridges across that public-private-producer continuum.”

Pozniak believes collaboration and competition are not opposing ideas. Canada’s breeding system, he argues, should collaborate where collaboration creates capacity — in precompetitive and foundational science, genomics infrastructure and data generation — while continuing to compete where competition creates value: developing better varieties for farmers.