Research Efforts Starting to Pay Off for Winter Cereals MB

Mar 27, 2018

Stakeholders were given a research update at the Winter Cereals Manitoba annual meeting earlier in March.

Doug Martin, Board Chair, said the organization has funded work out of the University of Saskatchewan to find the genes for cold-tolerance in winter wheat. He explained this research has been on-going for about four years and the presenters offered a positive update.

"They're making progress on identifying some varieties that have a high level of cold-tolerance and some genes that can be transferred. So between the researchers and our winter wheat breeder in Lethbridge, they're working closely together to try to get this to market eventually."

And while it'll be a while before these new breeds hit the market, Martin feels the organization's research efforts are starting to pay off.

Meantime, winter wheat acres in the province are down this year to about 70,000. Martin noted that's about a 50 per cent decline from last year when about 140,000 acres was planted. He did add however, half the 2016/17 acres were lost to winter kill.

Martin said this reduction in acres is starting to impact the organization's ability to fund research and other projects.

"We're struggling with getting check-off (dollars) to try to keep our organization going. We have money in the bank for our existing projects but going forward we can see that if acres don't increase we're going to have difficulty sustaining what we do."

He remains hopeful that the crop will rebound in popularity and more producers will grow it once again.

As for this year's crop, Martin said only time will tell how it is faring and noted that March is a critical month for the crop.

"Just talking to Ken Gross, he's on our Board and he's an agronomist, he's worked with winter wheat for twenty years and he said they have soil probes across western Canada and the temperatures weren't too bad where the probes where and so he's optimistic."

Source : Steinbachonline

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”