Molecular breeding | Breeders look to improve traditional crops without biotechnology
MORDEN, Man. — It’s getting harder to find beans and other non-soybean pulse crops around this area, but not here at the Agriculture Canada research centre.
The invasion of soybeans and corn to the area has conquered much of the acreage where the Red River Valley’s traditional crops like beans, sunflowers, oats and even wheat and canola once grew. But researchers hope modern breeding methods can keep some of the old crops growing in the area.
“There’s a real advantage to developing molecular methods for screening for root diseases because as you can see, it’s very laborious here,” said Agriculture Canada researcher Bob Conner as he stood in the midst of thousands of plots of pea and bean varieties.
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“We are going to have 3,500 plots to rate in the coming weeks. That will take all our time from now to the end of August.”
Edible beans and other crops are having a tough time competing for acreage with soybeans because of advances in developing soybean varieties that can be grown on the Prairies.
Many farmers like soybeans because of their easy management, low input demands and because many varieties have herbicide resistances.
Soybeans are among the big success stories of genetic modification, which is bad news for any crop going head-to-head with it.
Complicating the outlook for beans, peas and other small acreage pulses is that they are not expected to benefit from major investments from biotechnology firms. That’s because their acreage is too limited to offer companies enough profit potential and because many pulse buyers don’t want GM crops.
However, other modern methods are already being used by breeders and pathologists to try to develop better new varieties. The use of molecular markers, which can identify certain crucial genes in a variety, is helping shrink the amount of time and labour required to develop new varieties with already identified traits.
“Molecular breeding is becoming more and more common,” said Conner.
“Breeders are using it as a tool to select for parental material so they can combine resistance to a number of diseases all into one background.”
That potential is something Michael Reimer of Genome Prairie hopes to see exploited. His not-for-profit genomics institution sees methods like molecular breeding allowing scarce research resources to be more effectively invested.
“Conventional breeding is such a painstaking process,” said Reimer, who was part of the Pulse Growers tour.
“Being able to take advantage of some of these tools really is the wave of the future and certainly goes a long way to advancing crops like pulses, which don’t incorporate any genetic modification.”
For decades, crops like beans have offered prairie farmers agronomic advantages and been a useful part of their rotations, but their fate seems grim unless they can keep up with the surge of soybeans.
Reimer said molecular breeding might be one of the factors that allows beans, peas and other crops to hold at least some of their acreage against soybeans.
“How do you keep pace with soybeans, which are taking advantage of the (GM) technology?” said Reimer.
“This (molecular breeding) is where it’s going. It allows you to expedite the process and be a lot more precise.”
