Transition will take a few years | Federal researchers will instead focus on areas such as disease and insect resistance
Agriculture Canada’s new strategy aimed at gradually withdrawing financial resources from wheat breeding and varietal development is beginning to resonate throughout the industry.
Stephen Morgan Jones, director general for the prairie ecozone at Agriculture Canada’s science and technology branch, said the federal agriculture department is moving ahead with plans to redirect public research money away from downstream wheat research, including the development and commercialization of new field-ready wheat varieties.
Over time, Agriculture Canada will focus fewer resources on variety development and commercialization and more on so-called “upstream research” related to disease resistance, insect resistance and identifying new genetic resources.
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The transition out of wheat breeding is expected to take place over several years and new AC wheat varieties will continue to be registered for several years, Morgan Jones added.
But already, a number of respected wheat breeders and senior plant pathologists are leaving Agriculture Canada.
In addition, the federal agriculture department has scaled back its support for pre-registration testing of new wheat lines.
Last month, wheat experts attending the Prairie Grain Development Committee (PGDC) meetings in Saskatoon spent part of the week discussing ways to ensure that pre-registration or co-op testing for promising new wheat lines would not be disrupted by the partial withdrawal of federal resources.
Before new wheat lines are registered for commercial production in Western Canada, they are entered into pre-registration or co-op trials that assess in-field performance.
Agriculture Canada has traditionally covered the entire cost of co-ordinating those trials.
But beginning this year, that co-ordination function will be scaled back.
In the future, responsibility for co-ordinating and conducting the trials will be shared with other wheat breeding organizations, including university programs and private sector companies.
Morgan Jones said the decision to begin withdrawing Agriculture Canada resources from co-op testing is consistent with Ottawa’s intention to develop fewer wheat lines in the future.
“Agriculture Canada, up until fairly recently, has probably occupied 90 percent of the test space (in western Canadian wheat co-ops) but now, we’re down to almost half of the entries going into (the trials),” Morgan Jones said.
With the change in research focus, “we feel we should be bearing less of the cost and taking some of those resources and putting them back into up-front science.”
In an interview, Morgan Jones stressed that Agriculture Canada will scale back its participation in co-op trials gradually, in a way that does not jeopardize the testing system.
“In the short term, our position is that we will obviously not want to see the co-op trials compromised in any way and we have made arrangements (to ensure that the trials go ahead) for this year. But beyond 2013, we will be looking at alternative models,” he said.
Under the new system, it is expected that private research companies such as AgQuest and ICMS will play a larger role in co-ordinating the trials.
The monetary value of Agriculture Canada’s contribution to the co-op testing system is difficult to estimate but monetary and in-kind support has been estimated at $100,000 to $200,000 per co-op program.
As of last year, there were 13 co-op programs being conducted for wheat rye, and triticale, all of them co-ordinated by Agriculture Canada scientists.
Morgan Jones said Agriculture Canada will likely continue to withdraw resources from co-op trials as its proportion of new wheat lines entered is reduced.
“Over the next five years, we would, I think, expect to see the co-op system move more towards a cost-recovery mode,” he said.
“Agriculture Canada may continue to pay 50 percent of the costs if we’re (accounting for) 50 percent of the entries but some of the other players that are starting to come in here — and particularly the private sector entries — we would expect them to pay their way and I think they would likely not have much of an argument with that.”
The reduced role in co-op testing is just one of changes affecting Agriculture Canada’s research operations.
Efforts aimed at relocating research currently conducted at the Cereal Research Centre in Winnipeg are also continuing, with closure of that facility slated for March 2014.
Wheat breeders employed at the CRC will be relocated to Brandon and plant pathologists will be relocated to Morden, Man.
However, the closure of the CRC has coincided with the loss of some prominent staff members.
Most notably, the retirement of senior research scientists Jeannie Gilbert and Andy Tekauz, both known for their research with fusarium head blight and other cereal diseases, has prompted some in the industry to criticize Ottawa’s decision to close the CRC at a time when western Canadian losses related to fusarium head blight continue to rise.
Morgan Jones said fusarium head blight continues to be a high priority for Agriculture Canada, adding that the two positions vacated by Gilbert and Tekauz will be filled.
The decision to close CRC was made because the facility could no longer facilitate the science being conducted, he added.
“Both of those scientists (Gilbert and Tekauz) were asked to consider a move to Morden, where the pathology work is being focused,” Morgan Jones said.
“To my knowledge, both of them … did not wish to move and both of them have subsequently, and very recently, taken early retirement.”
“Fusarium continues to be a very high priority for us.”
The closure of CRC in Winnipeg is expected to result in 40 job cuts.
