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Spring
2017
grainswest.com33
INNOVATIVE IDEAS:
The AgriInnovation program has helped
cereal researchers across Canada to make great strides in wheat and
barley variety development, agronomy and plant pathology research.
country have been very helpful, so they’re looking forward to
doing more of the same in the next cluster.”
The current barley cluster includes projects from Alberta
to Prince Edward Island, and Law expects that the next
cluster will expand to include additional research scientists
in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
The barley cluster under the new policy framework will likely
expand the program and create even stronger networks of
cereal researchers that will be more efficient and effective,
with a greater degree of collaboration.
The AgriInnovation program is extremely important, and
represents a huge financial investment from the federal
government, the provincial government and producer groups
across the Prairies. The total program funding for the barley
cluster is $12 million, $8 million of which came from the federal
government, with the remainder coming from producer
groups and the province. The total program funding for the
wheat cluster is $25.2 million, with $12.7 million coming from
the Alberta Wheat Commission (AWC), the Western Grains
Research Foundation (WGRF) and the Canadian Field Crop
Research Alliance, and the remaining $12.5 million coming
from the federal government. Additionally, in 2015, AWC
partnered with several producer and industry groups to
fund 11 winter wheat research and development projects,
with matching funds provided through the AgriInnovation
program. In this case, the total investment from all partners of
$2.2 million is spread out over four years.
AgriInnovation under
Growing Forward 2
has been
beneficial to wheat and barley breeding programs because
it’s brought both producer and private funding into the mix.
“It’s primarily producer and public funding, but in specific
cases, there is some private interest also. It’s a Canada-
wide program approach for funding wheat and barley
development. And it really provides core program funding,”
said Garth Patterson, the Saskatoon-based executive director
of WGRF.
The AgriInnovation program has made a major difference in
the lives of cereal breeders, said Harpinder Singh Randhawa,
spring wheat breeder at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s
(AAFC) Lethbridge Research and Development Centre. “We
work as collaborators, and this fosters more collaboration
between universities and AAFC and other institutes,” he
said. “This helps us to pool our resources and enhance our
capacity.”
The cluster program enables both AAFC and other industry
groups to leverage funds from each other. Overall, the
program has helped industry leverage up to three times the
federal funding from private sources by acting as a catalyst
for applied research. The program is driven by the industry,
and allows research to be prioritized according to sector
and producer needs. More than 415 applications have gone
through the AgriInnovation program since its inception. The
results have been overwhelmingly positive.
The wheat cluster includes 50 research projects and has
developed new varieties that have higher yield, quality
and disease resistance in all classes. The barley cluster,
which includes 27 barley-related projects, has focused
on developing more resilient varieties with greater sprout
tolerance and shatter resistance in order to withstand
excessive moisture or drought conditions. Scientists in
the program are also working on other projects, ranging
from breeding genetics to agronomy, pathology, food and
nutrition.
Stable, long-term funding is crucial for cereal researchers.
Researchers like knowing what their sources of funding are,
how much they can leverage and how much money they can
expect to have.
“Wheat breeding is a long-term process, and you can’t
operate with a couple years of money here and there,” said
Randhawa. “These are locked, contractual agreements with
industry people and AAFC for the five years, which is great.