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Plant Breeding in Canada_x000D_
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Plant breeding is a team endeavour in which Canada has been a very successful player. For most of the time over the last hundred years, the public sector has been the dominant force and still has an extremely important role to play. In recent decades and, for some commodities, much longer than that the private sector has become a major player. The vegetable industry has long relied on private breeding. Maize also has a long history of private sector variety development. In more recent times, canola and soybeans have been added to this list. A number of companies have indicated their intent to move into wheat in a big way. Will public variety development disappear in Canada as it has in countries like England? Would that be a good thing? In my opinion, the answer to both questions is no._x000D_
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What are the perceived strengths of the private sector? They are focused and capable of directing large amounts of resources to variety development. It is fair to say that the capabilities of private and public sector breeders are, on average, the same. Access to resources, however, can make a big difference. Private companies are in direct contact with the users of their varieties. This is important in goal setting and cannot be done through intermediaries. We have seen excellent improvements to canola production from such investments. What are the perceived weaknesses of the private sector? Because of their profit-driven agenda, they are more risk averse. The focus is on large acreage crops on which profits can be made from seed sales. Yield tends to be the primary objective with less attention paid to other traits such as disease resistance, abiotic stress resistance and quality. Relatively little is done in the way of fundamental research. The competitive environment of the private sector tends to mean greater secrecy and thus less sharing of their results, especially with each other._x000D_
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What are the perceived strengths of the public sector? Public breeders are surrounded by a broad range of disciplines from basic sciences to cognate sciences such as agronomy, molecular biology, pathology, bioinformatics and grain science. University breeders, in particular, also interact with the bright young minds of their students. This day-to-day interaction with other disciplines is extremely beneficial to all concerned. Breeders who operate in isolation are not as effective as they can be. Scientists who practice in allied or supportive disciplines in the absence of variety developers can often lose their focus on the real targets. Public breeders are less risk averse and are mandated to do fundamental work as well as their applied breeding. Public breeders are less constrained by secrecy and thus tend to be more sharing of their findings and germplasm, although civil servants are restricted in what they can say regarding policy issues. What are the perceived weaknesses of the public sector? They can be somewhat less focused on variety development. They often have fewer resources than optimum for their variety development work._x000D_
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Crop agriculture in Canada will be best served if we have continued strong presence of both the private and the public sectors in variety development. Both can be equally effective. If one looks at the progress in productivity for canola (largely private sector) and wheat (largely public sector) in Western Canada they are very similar. Based on Canada Grains Council data, the average gain in yield over the past 30 years was 1.4 per cent per year for canola and 1.3 per cent per year for wheat. Given the much greater restrictions imposed by meeting quality targets in wheat, these are rather surprising figures. It must, of course, be kept in mind that factors other than the genetic gain from new varieties contribute to yield gain. Nonetheless, the focused effort that the private sector can bring and the training service and more risk-taking approach that the public sector can bring are very complementary. Relegating public sector breeders to a germplasm development role would be a serious mistake. We need to also keep in mind the team nature of the breeding enterprise. Given the importance of the grain industry to Canada we have greatly diminished our expertise in grain science and pathology as well as breeding and variety development per se. It will be easy to slip to a third-rate science base but difficult to regain a pre-eminent place as we should. If governments do not support these activities, farmers will have to._x000D_
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Bryan Harvey, Professor Emeritus of Plant Sciences, University of Saskatchewan
