GrainsWest Tech 2020

Tech 2020 Grains West 20 ONE OF A KIND Over the past six years Schaefer has been involved with several additional agriculture-related investigations using the SGM beamline. “There are few alternatives in the world for the SGM beamline, so you can’t just take your project somewhere else to do this work,” he said. “CLS is uniquely supportive of agricultural research across synchrotrons—it’s the premier facility for this kind of work.” “A lot of the synchrotrons are in big cities, so if you want to transport or grow plants [at those facilities] it’s not possible,” said Karunakaran. “At our synchrotron, there’s a big greenhouse for the University of Saskatchewan across the road. The facility is neighboured on one side by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and on the other side by the National Research Council. This is an ecosystem you will not find anywhere else in the world for agriculture and synchrotron.” The synchrotron community is small. There are just over 40 facilities around the world, including seven in North America. “These facilities are very competitive and are in very high demand,” said Karunakaran. “We have 23 different research stations or beamlines at CLS, and while demand for each line varies, we are generally oversubscribed by 50 per cent.” In a competitive process, researchers submit proposals for use of CLS facilities. The CLS receives an average of 600 proposals and hosts more than 1,000 unique users per year. When the facility opened in 2005, it encountered immediate demand for material science, physics, environmental and biological work. Its managers, however, saw the potential for the CLS to focus on agriculture. In 2015 and 2016, the CLS partnered with the Government of Saskatchewan, the University of Saskatchewan, Agriculture and Agri- Food Canada and the National Research Council to carry out certain experiments to demonstrate proof-of-concept for its use by the agriculture industry. “We took some samples from the plant science community and plant breeders and took images on different beamlines to show them the Synchrotron X-rays are very sensitive to small density differences in soft tissues such as living wheat heads, pictured above, making the system very useful for agricultural applications. FEATURE