USask appoints research chair to enhance wheat development

Aug 01, 2025

The University of Saskatchewan has appointed a research chair to accelerate wheat variety development.

Dean of the College of Agriculture and Bioresources Dr. Angela Bedard-Haughn says in a news release the role of Dr. Valentyna Klymiuk will be to "design and deploy leading-edge strategies and technologies to assess genetic diversity for delivery into new crop varieties that will benefit Saskatchewan producers and the agricultural industry,”

“We are grateful to Sask Wheat for investing in USask research as we work to develop the innovative products that strengthen global food security.” added Bedard-Haughn.

"I am thrilled to join the CDC and the College of Agriculture and Bioresources as I work to discover and deploy new traits to support our variety development programs. My vision is to bridge advances in science and technology with applied crop breeding, contributing to the CDC’s mission of delivering superior wheat varieties that strengthen the resilience of the agricultural sector,” said Klymiuk.

The position of research chair is funded by the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission (SaskWheat).

Chair of SaskWheat Jake Leguee says they are proud to "fund this research chair to enhance wheat productivity and profitability" for producers.

Better adapted wheat varieties give Saskatchewan producers more effective tools in their rotational toolbox,” said Leguee, “We strongly believe in public wheat breeding programs and as a producer I have seen first-hand the superior wheat varieties that come from program investments like this research chair. "

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.