Research facility opens | New technologies should enable researchers to speed variety development
A major player in the seed business has enhanced its wheat breeding efforts in Canada.
Dow AgroSciences Canada Inc. recently opened a 10,000 sq. foot cereal research and breeding facility in Nairn, Ont.
It replaces an older facility the company acquired when it bought the assets of Hyland Seeds in 2010.
Dow decided to stay in Nairn so it could keep the research expertise it had accumulated there.
Researchers should be able to produce varieties faster at the new facility, which will make use of technologies such as di-haploids, disease nurseries and shuttling germplasm between a winter nursery in Chile, Nairn and two other Dow facilities in Washington state and Australia.
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“We’re thrilled with the investment,” said Dow AgroSciences Canada president Jim Wispinski.
“Anytime we can increase our investment and update our facilities in Canada makes me very excited because that has lots of benefits long-term.”
The Nairn facility is the company’s only Canadian wheat breeding research centre. Dow recently acquired another one in Pullman, Wash., with the 2011 purchase of the Northwest Plant Breeding Co.
Wispinski said the company sees significant opportunity for wheat to feed a rapidly growing world population.
“There needs to be very significant investment to make sure that wheat remains competitive,” he said.
The Nairn facility will focus on creating varieties with superior yield, standability and natural genetic tolerance to disease, specifically fusarium head blight.
Varieties developed at the research centre will be marketed primarily in Eastern Canada by Hyland Seeds.
However, Dow will continue field testing promising varieties in the United States and Western Canada to see if there is a fit in those markets.
“How we go to market in new geo-graphies that Hyland doesn’t operate in will be determined,” said Wispinski.
Gerrid Gust, chair of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, is pleased to see Dow increase its investment in wheat.
“The more money we can bring to the table and the more minds, it has to be a good thing.”
Gust said Australia is spending $80 million a year on wheat varietal research, which is more than triple what’s being spent in Canada.
“They’re going to catch up and surpass us eventually. It’s probably going to be sooner rather than later,” he said.
Gust isn’t bothered that Dow’s initial investment is in Eastern Canada rather than Western Canada.
“There’s a lot of western varieties grown in the east, so I’m sure if our variety registration system can get its act together, we should be able to grow their eastern varieties,” he said.
Gust said the variety registration system is cumbersome and unpredictable and needs to be fixed to garner increased investment in wheat in Western Canada.
Wispinski said Dow will continue to look around the world and within Canada for additional research investment opportunities.
