b'MEET 3 YOUNG PLANT SCIENTISTS TRYING TO SOLVE SOME OLD PROBLEMSThe CPBI Innovation Scholarships recognize up-and-coming young plant breeders. Marc ZienkiewiczTHERES AN OLD saying about the best laid plans of mice and humans often going awry. Despite all the work we put intoSPONSOR THE CPBI SCHOLARSHIPS!breeding seed to grow the best crops possible, nature finds a way to foil usbe it with biotic or abiotic stress. The CPBI Awardswhich were formed in 2020 when the Seed of Recently on Seed Speaks, our audience got to meet threethe Year and Canadian Plant Breeding and Genetics Awards came people doing exciting new work in three distinct areas. Theirtogether under one umbrellaare an opportunity to recognize plant work is significant enough to warrant their status as the 2024breeders at various stages in their careers.Canadian Plant Breeding Innovation Awards scholars. The CPBI Innovation Scholarships (formerly Seed of the Year Rajbir Kaur of the University of Manitoba is doing a masters degree and focuses on enhancing pod shatter resist- scholarships) recognize up-and-coming young plant breeders. ance in canola using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology;The scholarships enjoy the support of 11 great sponsors this year Sheila Maria Pereira de Andrade attends the University of(see below) with three $3,500 scholarships being handed out. The Saskatchewan and her PhD research involves utilizing X-rayrecipients are selected each year by the winner of our Plant Breeding and RGB images to detect fusarium-damaged wheat kernels;& Genetics Award, who is David Lee for 2024.and Laura Esquivel Garcia of McGill University is pursuingIf your organization wishes to come onboard as a sponsor, email a masters degree, working on a project within the Canadianmzienkiewicz@seedworldgroup.comSclerotinia Initiative, studying a pathogen that affects multi-ple crops. The project involves genetic diversity studies, with a focus on sequencing the pathogens genome. The goal is to gather valuable genomic information for incorporation into breeding efforts.All three joined host Marc Zienkiewicz to explain the value of their work.The End of Pod Shatter?Pod shatter-resistant canola is crucial for maintaining crop uni-formity and minimizing losses, Kaur noted. The primary motiva-tion behind her work is to create a hybrid that possesses shatter resistance, specifically tailored for use by public universities.While there are shatter-resistant varieties available from com-panies, they often come with royalties and licensing restrictions, preventing their use in public breeding programs, she says.Initially, her team utilized CRISPR technology to trans- Figuring Out Sclerotiniaform two genotypes of canola, specifically Brassica napus, withGarcia hopes to better understand the genetic makeup of a CRISPR vector. They collected and tested hundreds of theScleroinia sclerotiorum, which is the costliest canola disease in resulting seeds, genotyping them using PCR. Fortunately, theyCanada.identified positive mutants with the desired Cas9 insertion. Weve successfully acquired a dataset containing samples Currently, we are at the stage of waiting for the plants toof isolates currently impacting commercial fields, thanks to our mature so that we can conduct phenotypic assessments. Thiscollaborators and the farmers who aided in sample collection, will provide insights into how well the gene has been incorpo- she says. This dataset provides crucial insights into the current rated and whether our modified plants exhibit shatter tolerancepopulation of the pathogen across three Canadian provinces: in comparison to wild types or other Brassica napus plants. Ontario, Quebec and Alberta.22 SEEDWORLD.COM/CANADAMARCH 2024'