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Plant breeding is getting faster. Genomic prediction can help identify promising plants before breeders spend years evaluating them. Better computing, environmental data and genomic tools are giving researchers information that previous generations of breeders simply didn’t have. But there’s a catch: breeding a variety faster doesn’t necessarily mean farmers get it faster. That distinction is becoming increasingly important as researchers explore just how much time technology can remove from the breeding process. Yue Yu, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, works at the intersection of genomics, plant breeding and environmental adaptation. Her research has included lodgepole pine and sunflower, using genomic information to understand how plants respond to their environments and how breeders might make better decisions earlier. The possibilities are significant. But Yue says biology remains stubbornly complicated. “The question is always about how accurate are these predictions?” she says. Some traits are much easier to predict than others. A trait controlled largely by a single gene presents a different challenge than one influenced by many genes and their interaction with the environment. That means even sophisticated genomic predictions still need something decidedly old-fashioned: plants growing in the real world. “A lot of my work still includes the validation that requires phenotypic data, which includes some of these long field trials to back up the results that we got from these innovative genomic tools,” Yue says. Field testing, she adds, remains a “gold standard” for determining whether those predictions actually work. Knowing Earlier What to Put in the Field That doesn’t diminish the potential value of genomic prediction. Yue has already seen what it can do in lodgepole pine, where researchers have decades of field data against which genomic predictions can be tested. “I would say our prediction accuracy is about 60 to 70%,” she says. Those genetic results are already being incorporated into breeding decisions and conservation planning in British Columbia. The implication for crop breeding is intriguing. If breeders can identify poor candidates earlier, they can potentially concentrate their field testing, money and time on material with a greater probability of success. The objective isn’t necessarily to eliminate field trials. It is to become much better at deciding what deserves to enter those trials in the first place. Could prediction eventually become so good that some field trials disappear? Yue can imagine it — eventually. “If we do get to know everything in the end, yes, I could see how field trials could be in the history book,” she says. But she quickly adds a significant qualifier. “I don’t think we will see that in our lifetime, at least.” The Genetic Potential We Left Behind One place breeders may find useful information is in wild relatives of modern crops. Agriculture has spent generations selecting plants for characteristics such as yield, quality and uniformity. That process produced extraordinarily productive crops, but selection can also narrow the genetic diversity available to breeders. Wild relatives have faced a different kind of selection pressure. Drought. Heat. Disease. Pests. Unpredictable environments. Yue describes those plants as holding “untapped potential” for breeding. “They actually have so much,” she says, pointing particularly to genetic diversity associated with biotic and abiotic resistance. That diversity could become increasingly valuable as breeders try to develop crops for environments that themselves are becoming harder to predict. And therein lies one of modern breeding’s great paradoxes: our ability to predict plant performance is improving at precisely the moment the environment we are predicting may be becoming less predictable. “If you don’t know where the goal is, you don’t know where to run to,” Yue says. Breeding for an anticipated future climate takes years and considerable resources. If that future unfolds differently than expected, breeders risk investing enormous effort in solving the wrong problem. Is Faster Always Better? New technology promises to shorten at least some of those timelines. But Yue cautions against treating speed itself as the objective. There are situations where speed is essential. If an important crop variety becomes vulnerable to a new disease or other threat affecting farmers across a large region, breeders may need every available tool to respond quickly.
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AAFC moved to close the Indian Head Research Farm in January. SaskSeed asked for a reversal. Then it tried something else. In January 2026, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada confirmed it would eliminate 665 positions and close seven research facilities. Two of them are in Saskatchewan, at Indian Head and Scott. Chris Barker, Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Seed Growers’ Association, says the loss at Indian Head was specific rather than symbolic. He says the site represented 33 per cent of Saskatchewan farmland and that the AAFC seed increase unit operated there, meaning any AAFC variety moving through the pipeline for Western Canadian farmers was at risk of not actually being produced. SaskSeed called for the closures to be reversed in February. Then it did something less common. It brought the provincial ministry a plan and volunteered to take on work nobody had assigned it. In July, Ottawa and Saskatchewan signed a memorandum of understanding covering the two farms. Barker is careful about what that does and does not mean: the stations look likely to continue under new management, but there is no final plan and the disposal has not been withdrawn. Nick Petruic, President of SaskSeed and a seed grower at Avonlea, Saskatchewan, draws a wider lesson from the past six months. He would rather be part of a change than watch one, and he argues that the price of admission is putting your hand up and taking on the work. Topics covered: - Why the AAFC research farm closures at Indian Head and Scott put public variety multiplication at risk, not just field research - How the Saskatchewan Seed Growers’ Association moved from a public statement to an operating proposal for the sites - What the July memorandum of understanding between Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Province of Saskatchewan actually commits to Chris Barker, Executive Director, Saskatchewan Seed Growers’ Association Nick Petruic, President, Saskatchewan Seed Growers’ Association On The Brink is a cross-country video series exploring the future of plant breeding in Canada. Each episode features voices from across the industry in an open, ongoing conversation about innovation and long-term investment in Canadian agriculture. #OnTheBrink #PlantBreeding #CanadianAgriculture #AgResearch 📌 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights on the latest in the seed industry!   📌   📌 About Seed World Group (SWG): Seed World Group is a handpicked team of strategists, storytellers and marketers. We’ve been serving the seed industry since 1991 and today have staff spread across North America Europe, LATAM and beyond. With our two divisions — Seed World CREATE and Seed World Media – we are able to deliver highly focused consulting, strategic solutions, digital tools and content shared via a suite of global seed sector media channels. Our goal is to connect people to people across the seed sector, locally, regionally and globally. Interested in learning more? Visit www.seedworldgroup.com. ▬ Website & Social Media ▬▬▬▬▬ ► Website: https://seedworldgroup.com/ ► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedworldgroup ► Twitter: https://twitter.com/seedworldgroup ► Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SeedWorldGroup
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Everyone keeps asking Dan Wright for the blueprint. The CEO of Seeds Canada says Canada is not building a blueprint. It is building an ecosystem. The federal research cuts announced in January reach well past any single crop. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada confirmed about 665 job losses and seven research site closures, part of a 15 per cent budget reduction over three years. The Prairie stations affected run field programs covering breeding, disease, agronomy, insect research, minor use pesticide registration and regional variety trials, and the Saskatchewan commodity groups that raised the alarm together represent barley, oats, oilseeds, pulses and wheat. The sector has spent the months since asking what replaces it. Dan Wright, Chief Executive Officer of Seeds Canada, says that is the wrong question. There is no perfect master plan handed down from on high, he says. It is an ecosystem, and an ecosystem has to be built and maintained by everyone inside it. The vision, in his account, is already settled: a thriving, innovation-driven system where collaboration and competition sit side by side, where diverse investment is attracted, and where farmers get real choice in the varieties they grow. What is not settled is the mechanism. Wright says the work now is building the conditions, and that for the first time in a long career in the seed industry he sees the whole sector pulling in the same direction. Asked who should lead, he does not hedge: the Canadian Wheat Research Coalition, because it is already leading. His one condition is alignment. One vision moved forward, he says, not multiple visions and competing thoughts. Topics covered: - Why an ecosystem is not a blueprint, and what that changes about the work in front of the Canadian seed sector right now - What the AAFC cuts of 665 positions and seven research sites mean across barley, oats, oilseeds, pulses and wheat - Who Wright says should lead the transition, and the alignment condition he attaches to it Guest: Dan Wright, Chief Executive Officer, Seeds Canada On The Brink is a cross-country video series exploring the future of plant breeding in Canada. Each episode features voices from across the industry in an open, ongoing conversation about innovation and long-term investment in Canadian agriculture. #OnTheBrink #PlantBreeding #CanadianAgriculture #cdnag 📌 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights on the latest in the seed industry!   📌   📌 About Seed World Group (SWG): Seed World Group is a handpicked team of strategists, storytellers and marketers. We’ve been serving the seed industry since 1991 and today have staff spread across North America Europe, LATAM and beyond. With our two divisions — Seed World CREATE and Seed World Media – we are able to deliver highly focused consulting, strategic solutions, digital tools and content shared via a suite of global seed sector media channels. Our goal is to connect people to people across the seed sector, locally, regionally and globally. Interested in learning more? Visit www.seedworldgroup.com. ▬ Website & Social Media ▬▬▬▬▬ ► Website: https://seedworldgroup.com/ ► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedworldgroup ► Twitter: https://twitter.com/seedworldgroup ► Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SeedWorldGroup
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Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students. Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding. He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says. The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada. He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics." Topics covered: - Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term commitment rather than a larger one - How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal dollars multiplies research capacity - How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from farm kids to city kids Guest: Istvan Rajcan, professor of soybean breeding and genetics, University of Guelph On The Brink is a cross-country video series exploring the future of plant breeding in Canada. Each episode features voices from across the industry in an open, ongoing conversation about innovation and long-term investment in Canadian agriculture. #OnTheBrink #PlantBreeding #CanadianAgriculture #Soybeans #CdnAg 📌 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights on the latest in the seed industry!   📌   📌 About Seed World Group (SWG): Seed World Group is a handpicked team of strategists, storytellers and marketers. We’ve been serving the seed industry since 1991 and today have staff spread across North America Europe, LATAM and beyond. With our two divisions — Seed World CREATE and Seed World Media – we are able to deliver highly focused consulting, strategic solutions, digital tools and content shared via a suite of global seed sector media channels. Our goal is to connect people to people across the seed sector, locally, regionally and globally. Interested in learning more? Visit www.seedworldgroup.com. ▬ Website & Social Media ▬▬▬▬▬ ► Website: https://seedworldgroup.com/ ► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedworldgroup ► Twitter: https://twitter.com/seedworldgroup ► Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SeedWorldGroup
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Jim Dyck has spent about 18 years breeding oats in Saskatchewan. He is one of a handful of private oat breeders left in Western Canada, and he will tell you why that number is so small. In this episode of On The Brink, Dyck walks through what it actually takes to bring a new oat variety to market. Oat breeding runs on a 10 to 15 year clock, and the money only arrives at the end of it. When funding gets uncertain, a program does not shut down loudly. It slows projects and shelves some of them, and none of that generates an announcement. His answer is a variety use agreement. A grower who buys certified seed and later plants farm-saved seed of that variety declares those acres and pays a per-acre fee back into the breeding program. On ORe BOOST, the Seeds Canada listing caps that fee at $2 per acre. A second Oat Advantage variety, ORe RUMINATOR, is listed at $2.50, with certified seed launching in fall 2026. Dyck also talks about the feed oat family he is developing, bred for high protein and kernel uniformity, and why oats keep him interested after nearly two decades. "There are so many things that we can work with in oats that it's easy to get up in the morning and be in a field of oats," he says. Filmed in an oat plot at Ag in Motion near Langham, Sask. Jim Dyck, Owner, Oat Advantage On The Brink is a cross-country video series exploring the future of plant breeding in Canada. Each episode features voices from across the industry in an open, ongoing conversation about innovation and long-term investment in Canadian agriculture. #seeds #seeding #seedworld #agriculture #oats #plantbreeding #seedindustry #seedsector #farming #agribusiness #westerncanada #cdnag 📌 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights on the latest in the seed industry!   📌   📌 About Seed World Group (SWG): Seed World Group is a handpicked team of strategists, storytellers and marketers. We’ve been serving the seed industry since 1991 and today have staff spread across North America Europe, LATAM and beyond. With our two divisions — Seed World CREATE and Seed World Media – we are able to deliver highly focused consulting, strategic solutions, digital tools and content shared via a suite of global seed sector media channels. Our goal is to connect people to people across the seed sector, locally, regionally and globally. Interested in learning more? Visit www.seedworldgroup.com. ▬ Website & Social Media ▬▬▬▬▬ ► Website: https://seedworldgroup.com/ ► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedworldgroup ► Twitter: https://twitter.com/seedworldgroup ► Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SeedWorldGroup
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