Midge-tolerant wheat changed the calendar for prairie growers.
It let them stop scouting fields at dusk and, as Dr. Tyler Wist puts it, plant a crop and head to the lake on the long weekend without a second thought.
But that freedom rests on a single gene.
What happens to Canadian wheat if that one line of defense is ever broken?
Why one gene keeps a scientist up at night
Wist, a research scientist in field crop entomology with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Saskatoon, has spent his career studying wheat midge. He remembers what the crop looked like before protection existed. In the 1990s, before midge-tolerant wheat, the pest caused yield losses of up to 90 percent.
For now, the tolerance is holding. But if it were overcome, the fallback is thin.
Without continued investment, growers could be pushed back into long evenings of scouting and insecticide applications. Further complicating the picture, Wist notes there is now only one insecticide product registered in Canada for wheat midge control. In a wet year, he warns, that could spell disaster.
That is why a single point of failure worries him.
In his words, “relying on one single resistance gene keeps me up at night.” His reference point is south of the border, where “the hessian fly just keeps overcoming resistance genes as soon as science can find them.”
He does not want that pattern repeated here.
Buying 90 years, and what it will take
The current defense is not the gene alone. It is the strategy around it.
Growers plant an interspersed refuge, pairing SM1 wheat with a non-SM1 variety. Wist estimates that this approach “should buy us 90 years before we get virulent wheat midge populations.”
But keeping that runway means doing the work now.
Wist says he has two messages for decision makers: “keep funding wheat midge research to find new resistance traits,” and make the refuge system cheaper and easier for breeders to use.
Researchers are already pursuing a second gene that synergizes with SM1, along with mechanical traits that could deter wheat midge from laying eggs.
For now, the system is holding.
Without continued investment, there is no guarantee it will last.
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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.
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