Funding will total $23 million
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
Saskatchewan Pulse Growers (SPG) is providing the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre (CDC) with about $23 million in funding to use for pulse crop breeding and research.
The funding will focus on breeding peas, lentils, chickpeas, dry beans and fava beans; and help Saskatchewan remain among the leaders in pulse crop production.
“The availability of continually improving pulse crop varieties from the CDC has fuelled the rapid growth of pulse crop production for Saskatchewan growers over the past 20 years,” said Corey Loessin, Vice Chair of Saskatchewan Pulse Growers in a release. “Our investments in support of pulse crop breeding will help to keep Saskatchewan growers positioned among the most competitive in the world.”
The CDC is confident its research staff can use the funding to develop breeds with a variety of benefits.
“This significant increase in funding from SPG will support plant breeder’s work on a long-term basis, ensuring they are able to deliver on the agronomic and end-use attributes that are most important to Saskatchewan farmers through innovative plant breeding,” Kofi Agblor, Managing Director of the CDC said in a release.
Stats Canada estimates about 7.3 million acres of pulses were seeded in 2016.