Grainswest - Tech 2025

Tech 2025 Grains West 42 as 40 per cent. In waiting for a field to dry, a farmer risks shattering and straw breakage. “When the farmers ask me when they should harvest, I tell them, ‘the day before it blows away,’” said Hilmarsson. A GRAIN BREEDING PIPELINE Under Hilmarsson’s leadership, the Vala Plant Breeding Program was launched in 2023. Its primary goal is to make Iceland self-sufficient in grain production for food and livestock feed. The Vala Program is largely focused on barley research. An earlier barley program was discontinued in 2017 when the breeder in charge, Jónatan Hermannsson, retired after 30 years on the job. However, the defunct program provided a substantial foundation for the new one. Hilmarsson attributes much of the success of the Vala Program to the work of his predecessor and other accomplished breeders. “We’re standing on the shoulders of giants all the time,” he said. In building his case for government funding, Hilmarsson emphasized barley is a foundational crop. Although wheat plays a more significant role in Iceland’s economy due to higher consumption, the study of its cultivation has only recently begun, and it is not yet grown by Icelandic farmers. Hrannar and his team hope winter wheat production will one day supply a portion of demand from the country’s livestock and fish farming sectors. It may also potentially be used to combat soil erosion where winter snow cover is sparse. Oats form the third pillar of the program. Iceland has conducted extensive research on oat production in collaboration with other Nordic countries. This has provided a good starting point for the launch of a breeding program. The barley breeding program concentrates on three key traits: early maturity, yield and test weight, which is an indicator of grain density and quality. In the cool Icelandic climate, the growth speed a plant requires to reach maturity may come at the sacrifice of yield. The winter wheat breeding program will focus on the same traits as barley, plus winter survival and falling number. “I’m sitting on 64 degrees north, the campus of the Agricultural University of Iceland. I’m on the south of Iceland, and we go all the way to just under 66 degrees, and for you, that’s like central Yukon,” he said. “So, it is a huge challenge to do this, and very exciting.” Each spring, to gather a wide variety of data, Hilmarsson conducts barley trial plots in six locations. These are conducted on land provided by willing farmers. Most happen to raise dairy cattle. He emphasized the importance of their participation in the encouragement of grain production. “Farmers take advice from specialists with care, but they listen to other farmers. Peer-to-peer knowledge sharing is the most important seed we plant.” GLOBAL COLLABORATION Despite its small population and remote location, Iceland is an active collaborator in global agricultural research, particularly within the Nordic region. In addition to his leading research role at the Agricultural University of Iceland, Hilmarsson serves as vice-chair of the board of directors for NordGen, a Nordic gene bank and genetic knowledge resource. A key initiative under NordGen’s stewardship is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, operated in partnership with the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Situated on a mountainside in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago at the confluence of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, it is the world’s largest seed repository. Safe from natural and manmade threats, the facility now stores more than 1.3 million seed varieties from across the world. Hilmarsson took part in a major vault deposit last year and has mixed emotions about this global collaboration. “The beautiful part is that all of humanity is working together on saving our seeds,” he said. “The scary part is we don’t trust each other to not ruin them through our activity. We know that we must put them away from ourselves, otherwise they might get lost.” A SELF-SUFFICIENT ICELAND Hilmarsson’s work aims to enhance Icelandic food security and serves as a research model for other cold-climate regions. It challenges the barriers that have hindered grain production in the far north. His vision is long-term. Under his leadership, the Vala Program is making remarkable progress toward Icelandic grain self-sufficiency. By 2028, he anticipates the release of a new barley variety, followed closely by the introduction of Iceland-adapted winter wheat. “In 10 years, I want the headlines to read: ‘Iceland no longer imports barley,’” he said. “And by then, we’ll be growing our own winter wheat, too.” FEATURE “Farmers take advice from specialists with care, but they listen to other farmers. Peer-to-peer knowledge sharing is the most important seed we plant.” — Hrannar Smári Hilmarsson