Meet Jerome Bélanger (McGill University), a recipient of one of the 2023 Canadian Plant Breeding Innovation Scholarships.
The scholarships — part of the CPBI Awards program which also includes Seed of the Year and the Plant Breeding & Genetics Award — are made possible through a slate of great sponsors. On board as sponsors this year are Alberta Wheat & Barley, C&M Seeds, Canadian Seed Growers Association, FP Genetics, Germination, Nutrien Ag Solutions, Richardson, Sask Wheat, SeCan, Warburtons, Western Grains Research Foundation and Seeds Canada.
Bélanger, 35, is known as an ambitious, original and highly independent researcher who had his own idea to start a PhD research project aimed at identifying novel genes involved in the early flowering/maturity of soybeans using CRISPR-Cas9 and QTL mapping. Currently, his project aims to understand how to develop extra-early soybean varieties to enable cultivation in Canadian regions such as northern Saskatchewan and Alberta.
He’s also trying to develop novel genetic soybean transformation techniques that could increase the competitiveness of Canadian plant breeders and seed companies for other traits.
“As you know, soybean is a very important crop worldwide, but northern climates limit the kind of crops that can be grown, which includes soybean. Here in Quebec and Ontario soybean has been grown for quite a long time, but on the Prairies, it’s been very recent that soybean has been introduced into rotations,” Belanger says.
“The crop is important because it fixes nitrogen. For farmers on the western Prairies, soybean can be an additional nitrogen fixing crop in their rotation toolkit, which also means that they can generate a good profit margin out of this crop. Introducing new varieties that can be grown in more regions is something that could be a real game changer for farmers.”
The Canadian Plant Breeding Innovation Scholarships are sponsored by Alberta Wheat, Alberta Barley, C&M Seeds, Canadian Seed Growers’ Association, FP Genetics, Germination, Nutrien Ag Solutions, Richardson, SaskWheat, SeCan, Warburtons, Western Grains Research Foundation and Seeds Canada.
