Dale Burns is a longtime canola breeder with Bayer Crop Science based in Lethbridge, Alberta, whose career has spanned the transformation of Canadian canola from open-pollinated varieties to today’s predominantly hybrid crop. He has worked extensively in hybrid development and breeding pipeline improvement, helping develop commercial products focused on yield, maturity, disease resistance, standability, harvestability and resilience under environmental stress. Burns grew up on a dairy farm in Quebec, studied at the University of Manitoba, and has been recognized for his contributions to plant breeding with Monsanto’s Global Plant Breeding Career Award in 2015 and Bayer’s Global Breeding Excellence Award in 2023.