b'What made you want to retire at this point?My wife Linda and I have always had the attitude that we know weve got limited time on this earth, and at some point we need to retire and pass the torch on to the next generation. Im really happy and satisfied with the breeding progress Ive been able to accomplish over the years, of course with the financial help and advocacy of farmers, producer commissions, and Ducks Unlimited Canada. Everyone involved is really part of the suc-cess story.What guided you in your winter wheat breeding journey?When I started breeding winter wheat in 1999, there had certainly been progress in developing improved varieties for Western Canada, but from an industry perspective, it certainly wasnt as great as what had been accomplished in spring wheat. What I very rapidly discovered was that there were still many improvements that needed to be made. In my mind, it was pretty clear where we needed to go.Rob Graf is known as one of Canadas top winter wheat breeders.Where was that?A lot of work had already been done on improving plant typeWhats one of your top pieces of advice for how we canand yield, with shorter stature varieties of better lodging resist- maintain a strong plant breeding industry in Canada?ance available to farmers. An obvious area for improvementIm a very staunch supporter of a strong variety registration was disease resistance. For example, AC Bellatrix had just beensystem, because it evaluates the merit of new varieties relative registered. It was a good milling quality winter wheat with buntto industry standards. I see that as absolutely critical not just resistance, but thats the only type of disease resistance it had.for our producers, but for the entire industry. I dont know any There were also couple of other varieties that had leaf and/ farmers that say they want more varieties. What they do want or stem rust resistance but were of poorer quality which wereis better varieties, and an effective registration system is central eventually removed from the Canada Western Red Winterto that. Over the past decade, the evolution of the Prairie Grain (CWRW) class. It became pretty clear to me that we neededDevelopment Committee, where there is now very good pre-to develop good milling quality varieties that combined manydictability, transparency and cross-sectorial representation, has types of disease resistance, including fusarium head blight andbeen very important. stripe rust resistance, objectives that were added in the mid-2000s. From the quality side, the classes are pretty well defined.Whats the top challenge breeders face in the future in When I started, Canada Western Red Winter was the onlyyour opinion?winter wheat class, and in order to get be registered, lines hadWeve been seeing a lot more variability in our climate over the to have certain milling, baking and dough functionality attrib- past decade. Breeders will continue to have to develop varieties utes. Starting in 2008, the Special Purpose class created thethat are going to work well in all these different environments possibility of developing varieties for alternative markets in bothwhile resisting constantly evolving disease and insect threats. spring and winter wheat, though to date these varieties haveIt probably means that its not just one or two varieties that are had limited uptake. going to carry the day. What are the implications of that? Were going to need larger plant breeding programs to find those What did that process look like? rare segregants that work well in particular environments. We The primary objective was to develop agronomically superioralso need to have effective post-registration testing systems so CWRW varieties with resistance to all three rusts and thenthat we get a good handle on where new varieties are region-add resistance to FHB, bunt, wheat curl mite, and so on. Weveally adapted so farmers can make informed choices as to what accomplished that, but the challenge is now to pyramid severalthey should grow. Ultimately, all of this will take more funding. effective genes for each disease into new varieties so achieveHow do we get more investment in breeding? There are differ-long-lasting, durable resistance. Thats really the next phase andent ideas. Now that weve turned the corner on the pandemic, is well underway. In order to do that, we can use marker assistedwe need to restart some of these conversations. I think these are selection, where we use molecular markers to track the genesexciting times and I hope to be able to contribute.SWthat we incorporate.with files from Trevor Bacque 52/ SEEDWORLD.COMJANUARY 2023'