The new Seed Variety Use Agreement pilot project could be the beginning of something big that puts Canada on the map for maximizing innovation in breeding.
After 12 years of discussion, the seed industry has taken a momentous step to usher in a new era for plant breeding innovation in Canada.
At the Prairie Grain Development Committee (PGDC) meetings in Winnipeg in February, the Canadian Plant Technology Agency (CPTA) and the Canadian Seed Trade Association (CSTA) announced two initiatives they say will help Canadian crops remain competitive.
CPTA has launched a pilot program to test how the Seed Variety Use Agreement (SVUA) will work in the real world. It is paired with a working group spearheaded by the CSTA that will bring together producers and industry stakeholders for updates on the pilot program and act as a forum to provide advice and collaborate.
The pilot program will introduce a SVUA system for a limited number of seed varieties sold for planting beginning in spring 2020. Limagrain Cereals Research Canada’s first registered wheat varieties — CS Accelerate and CS Daybreak to be sold by Canterra Seeds — will be included. A soybean variety from SeCan will be a part of the pilot project as well — ND17009GT is not currently registered in Canada and will not be sold until registration, which is expected in the spring of 2020. ND17009GT is a glyphosate tolerant soybean developed by North Dakota State University. Full details of the SVUA for the variety will be available from SeCan upon registration, says western business manager Todd Hyra.
Under the SVUA, producers who purchase a variety with a SVUA attached will be invoiced a Seed Variety Use Fee for every year that they choose to divert some grain of that variety to use as seed (often referred to as farm-saved seed).
The pilot will assess how the SVUA works in a real-farm situation in order to better inform the value creation discussion for the entire agriculture value chain, notes CPTA executive director Lorne Hadley. Specifically, the pilot will evaluate the proposed platform that will be used to contract, track, invoice and collect fees for farm-saved seed of SVUA varieties.
Direct-to-Customer
CPTA has created this pilot program in response to producers who raised questions during the value creation consultations. The outcome of the pilot will provide producers with detailed answers about how the SVUA will work. It will also help the seed industry better understand how it can generate a return on plant breeding investments.
“This is a direct-to-customer prototype to show how modern communications and contracting tools can be used to generate revenue for plant breeding programs in Canada,” Hadley said. “Producers will be able to directly reward breeders of varieties they see value in and want to enter into a SVUA for.”
The SVUA platform is a confidential, online database that will handle all SVUA agreements, variety use acknowledgements, declarations, invoices, payments and compliance activity and data. Phase 1 of the SVUA platform will be operational in March 2020. Phase 2 of the System will be completed by March 2021.
The system is built on a platform used by all retailers and growers of midge tolerant wheat (MTW) in Western Canada for the past decade. Modifications to the MTW platform have enabled the SVUA platform to be developed for value creation purposes, Hadley noted.
Four Short Years
The first two wheat varieties that will have a SVUA attached were first announced by Canterra Seeds during the summer of 2019 and represent a major shift in the wheat breeding landscape in Canada. Developed by Limagrain Cereals Research Canada and its senior breeder Dr. Jason Reinheimer, CS Accelerate and CS Daybreak were rapidly brought to market which is impressive for a breeding program that has been operating in Canada for only four years, Reinheimer says.
For a crop that can take as long as 10 years to bring a variety to market, LCRC is pushing the boundaries for what is possible in wheat breeding, he adds.
High yielding in a short strong straw package combined with excellent rust resistance, CS Accelerate has demonstrated yields 5% greater than AAC Penhold. It is the latest wheat variety to be accepted into the Warburtons Canadian Identity Preserved Program.
Warburtons has a 26-year history of sourcing Canadian wheat with the end-use of providing bread products to U.K. consumers through its IP program. CS Accelerate was the only new wheat variety selected to be added to the contract program for 2020.
“We’ve been evaluating CS Accelerate for three years,” says Adam Dyck, Warburtons program manager for Western Canada. “In 2018, we had seen a couple of years of strong performance and really, really good bread quality. CS Accelerate’s performance in 2019 cemented our view that this is a Warburtons quality wheat.”
Along with extensive testing to make sure it possessed the desired end-use qualities like dough and bread quality that would make it desirable to bakers, the team at LCRC balanced the need for high, reliable grain yield to make it a productive choice for Canadian farmers.
“Combining high end-use quality with high grain yield is quite a challenge,” says Reinheimer. “CS Accelerate is unique as it can provide the high grain volumes per acre desired by farmers while being very desirable to millers and bakers through its great functional and end-use quality.”
The rapid development of plant breeding technology is opening up a world of new possibilities in wheat breeding. Reinheimer says modern tools are set to change cereal breeding in significant ways.
“This is an exciting time that is really encapsulated by the whole value creation discussion. We’ve shown you can have breeders, companies, both public and private organizations, come in with new ideas, new ways of doing things, and you can use new breeding methods to go faster and look for novel ways to use the end product to add value for the grower,” Reinheimer adds.
“A company like us that breaks the norm and brings products of high value to market very fast can come into the space, but we need the financial incentive to do it and the SVUA offers that incentive. It also gives us an opportunity to partner with a company like Canterra Seeds, who are also able to use technology and their customer network to bring quality seed to market faster than ever before.”
LCRC was established in 2015 as a joint venture between the Winnipeg-based Canterra Seeds and France-based Limagrain. LCRC is the first endeavour of its kind in Canada, a country that has lagged behind other areas of the world where value creation models have already taken root in the form of end-point royalties or trailing royalties, the latter of which the SVUA is based on.
“The only way we as a breeding company can invest dollars into research for the benefit of the Canadian grower is the through the royalties that we receive from growers themselves,” says Tatiana Henry, CEO of LCRC. She’s originally from Ukraine and has experience working with value creation systems elsewhere in the world.
“We hope the pilot is successful and brings value to us, which we will pay back to growers through new innovations in breeding.”
Visit seedvaluecreation.ca for more info.
