38 / SEEDWORLD.COM INTERNATIONAL EDITION 2026 Syngenta, the contrast between private and public breeding couldn’t be clearer. “It’s exciting to step into SeCan as it turns 50,” Hooyer says. “The resources are tremendous — the breeders, the institutions, the network. What I love is the speed. If we hear something from a member company, we can act on that immediately. That agility just doesn’t exist the same way in a multinational.” Private-sector breeding is powerful but often focused on different priorities. “Private programs think in quarters and often lack the long term commitment required. At SeCan, the vision has been consistent — long term stable support of innovation. That’s what makes it unique.” Watching Genetics Evolve Few people have had a closer vantage point on SeCan’s evolution than its Western research and development lead Jim Downey, who joined the organization nearly three decades ago. “When I started, AC Barrie wheat could grow up to my chest in wet spots,” he recalls. “Today’s wheats are a foot shorter, stand better, yield more, and carry much stronger disease packages. We’d never go back.” Downey attributes that transforma tion to long-term investment — check offs, public funding and breeder focus — and he sees the stakes clearly. “If you pull a major player out of wheat, barley, oats — crops almost every Prairie farm grows — you don’t just slow progress. You risk going backwards. Diseases evolve. Genetics have to keep pace.” The Eastern Playbook: Premiums, Not Parity If Western Canada’s superpower is scale in cereals, Eastern Canada’s is precision in soy. Martin VanderLoo, president of Huron Commodities, has built a career on that distinction. “Competing vessel-for-vessel on bulk soy is a tough game,” he says. “The Mississippi to New Orleans is a logistics machine. Our answer in Ontario and Quebec has been to differentiate — deliver the protein, sucrose and function ality the food market is paying premiums for.” Martin VanderLoo is president of Huron Commodities based in Clinton, Ontario. Milad Eskandari, soybean breeder and professor at University of Guelph’s Ridgetown campus. Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean genetics and breeding in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph. Japanese, European, and Southeast Asian buyers pay substantially more for Canadian beans that meet exacting specs: high protein, sucrose, precise 7S/11S ratios, and specialty traits like low lipoxygenase for cleaner flavor and trypsin-inhibitor nulls for better digestibility. “Food companies now start at the genetics,” VanderLoo says. “They come with specs, and we take those needs to public programs with co-funding. That loop works. And the premiums shore up farm revenue when commodity prices are soft.” The Long View Few know SeCan’s importance better than Istvan Rajcan, soybean breeder at the University of Guelph. “SeCan has been fantastic to work with,” Rajcan says. “For more than 27 years, they’ve supported our program — not just financially, but with ideas and feedback about what the seed industry needs.” That feedback is essential because of the timelines. “Even with winter nurser ies in Costa Rica saving us two years, it takes about eight years to finish a variety,” Rajcan explains. “Then you need another two or three years to bulk up seed before farmers ever see it. So really, you’re talk ing 10 or 11 years from cross to commer cial adoption.” A big myth, he says, is that private breeding is inherently faster. “Technology makes us more efficient — helping us avoid wasting resources on material that won’t work — but it doesn’t eliminate the need for multi-year field testing. Nothing replaces that.” Rajcan says SeCan’s value lies in understanding that reality. “They know this is long-term work. They listen to what we can and can’t do in a timeframe, and we listen to them about what the market needs. That dialogue is what makes the partnership so strong.” At the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown campus, soybean breeder and Rajcan protégé Milad Eskandari echoes that view — and pushes it further. Since taking over his soybean breeding pro gram in 2013, SeCan has become his main sponsor.
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