Meet Loveleen Dhillon (University of Saskatchewan), 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.
Dhillon’s research broadly addresses the challenge of improving nitrogen fixation in pea, building on research conducted by post-doctoral fellow Tony Yang. Nitrogen fixation is a key benefit of legume crops, and expanded use of legume crops in cropping systems is a critical approach to reducing greenhouse gasses to address climate change. The 30-year-old’s PhD research has utilized plant breeding, physiology and molecular biology approaches.
The first paper from this research was recently published in Field Crops Research. In this paper she demonstrated that pea lines derived from crosses with nodulation mutants produced high grain yield along with higher N fixation potential and seed protein concentration than check cultivars, making them attractive for use in pea breeding programs.
“My research will definitely help to present pea as a sustainable crop option in the currently-dominated cereal and oilseed cropping systems of Canada, and it will reduce the dependence on nitrogenous fertilizers, and will definitely help to address the environmental pollution that is caused by these fertilizers — which also leads to a decrease in production crop production costs overall,” she says.
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.
