Grainswest - Winter 2024

Winter 2024 grainswest.com 21 have to remember is that there’s no doubt plant breeding is a multi-year endeavour, and that’s on purpose,” said Pozniak. Measuring a variety’s performance and testing it in a range of environments requires time. Breeders have access to several tools that can help shorten the variety development process. These include double haploid technologies in wheat and speed breeding platforms that produce multiple generations per year in the greenhouse. Such methods can cut a couple of years off the traditional plant breeding window of about 10 years. “There’s an appropriate balance between efficiency, speed and performance and marketability in the product,” said Pozniak. It’s also important to note that a shorter plant breeding window doesn’t cut down the time it typically takes to field test the final product. Rob Graf, manager of seed strategy and innovation at SeedNet and retired Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) wheat breeder, said Canadian plant breeding requirements have evolved to help the process become even more efficient. Kernel visual distinguishability (KVD) was eliminated in 2008. The system held that each class of wheat had its own unique size, shape and colour. To be registered, a new variety of wheat had to be physically like other varieties in its class. “That was a huge impediment in wheat breeding,” said Graf. Before this system was scrapped, Graf said there was a period of six or seven years when no winter wheat was registered in Western Canada. If an experimental line failed to meet its KVD requirements in any one of its three years of registration testing, the line was dead, period. Now plant breeders don’t have to be concerned if the kernel has a designated shape. This opens the door to varieties that might have been previously disqualified. Graf started as a wheat breeder in the 1980s and has worked for both public and private breeding programs over the years. One of the biggest changes he’s noticed throughout his career is how funding has evolved, particularly the impact of check-off dollars on plant breeding programs in the public sector, starting in the 1990s. “Initially, it facilitated an effective doubling in size of breeding programs, and the result was a doubling of the rate of genetic increase in yield,” said Graf. “It made a huge impact in terms of the yield gains that we’re seeing in wheat. Unfortunately, many public breeding programs are now shrinking.”