Breanna Miller and Jay Whetter, two Canola Council of Canada employees, spent the day on a National Circle for Indigenous Agriculture and Food (NCIAF) tour in August. They made a short presentation about canola and spent the rest of the day connecting with Indigenous farmers and National Circle staff.
Harmeet Singh Chawla leads one of four new grower-funded verticillium stripe studies. Chawla will create genetic markers for the most aggressive verticillium stripe isolates. Test labs can use these markers to qualify the virulence level of isolates in a field. Canola breeders can use them to select cultivars with resistance to these most virulent isolates.
The carbon market is like a black box. Is agriculture, in general, missing a big opportunity to make more money from carbon? Will carbon “farming” become a bigger and bigger part of our lives?
Animal geneticists pioneered new tools to tackle complex traits. That expertise is coming to crops and could mean improvements to complex traits such as heat tolerance and nutrient use efficiency in canola.
It takes years to research and develop new canola seed cultivars. After that, it takes logistically complicated steps to produce and deliver commercial seed that meets the specifications of individual farmers.