SEPTEMBER 2026  SEEDWORLD.COM/CANADA   5
Research Cuts Led Him Toward a New 
Challenge
Benjamin Erickson | McGill University
He wasn’t planning on going back to school.
After graduating from the University of Guelph with dis­
tinction, Ben Erickson joined the Agriculture and Agri-Food 
Canada (AAFC) soybean breeding program in Ottawa, 
Ont., spending two years working on food-grade soybeans, 
climate-smart cropping systems and genomic breeding tools.
Then, in 2025, major cuts to AAFC research facilities 
were announced to meet federal budget saving targets.
“This was the event that influenced me to return to my 
studies,” he says.
Today, Ben is pursuing a master’s of science at McGill 
University, tackling one of soybean breeding’s most persis­
tent problems: developing durable resistance to Sclerotinia 
stem rot.
White mould is among Canada’s most economically 
damaging diseases in soybean, canola and pulse crops, with 
severe outbreaks causing yield losses of 50% or more. For 
breeders, the challenge is finding plants that remain resistant 
against genetically diverse pathogen populations.
Rather than screening soybean lines against a single 
fungal isolate, he is evaluating 34 lines against 10 genetically 
distinct isolates collected across the country. Combined with 
genomic data, the work could identify stable resistance and 
provide breeders with useful parent lines, candidate genes 
and improved screening methods.
When Tanya Copley hired him at the Centre de 
recherche sur les grains inc. (CÉROM), she knew about his 
extensive field experience but was struck by how quickly he 
adapted to laboratory work.
McGill professor Jacqueline Bede sees broader potential 
in his work. She says Erickson’s “matrix” approach — testing 
soybean resistance against multiple pathogen isolates from 
across Canada — could generate insights useful not only for 
soybean breeding, but for disease-resistance research in other 
crops.
She Crossed Continents to Solve One of 
Canola’s Toughest Problems
Shruti Kashyap | University of Manitoba
Some researchers spend years finding the question they want 
to answer. Shruti Kashyap brought hers with her.
After earning undergraduate and master’s degrees 
in genetics and plant breeding in India, she came to the 
University of Manitoba to pursue a PhD focused on one 
of Canada’s biggest emerging challenges: understanding 
how drought and water stress influence disease resistance in 
canola.
It’s research that sits squarely at the intersection of 
climate change, plant pathology and crop improvement — a 
place where tomorrow’s breeding breakthroughs are increas­
ingly likely to happen.
Shruti’s doctoral research examines how different soil 
moisture conditions affect 
Verticillium stripe, a 
disease becoming more 
important in Canadian 
canola production. Rather 
than studying the patho­
gen in isolation, she’s inves­
tigating the three-way 
relationship between the 
plant, the disease and the 
environment.
Her goal is simple in 
concept but complex in 
execution: help breeders 
better evaluate disease 
resistance under the kinds 
of unpredictable environ­
mental conditions farmers 
increasingly face.
The project blends 
physiology, molecular biol­
ogy, genetics and anatomy, 
requiring everything from 
transcriptomics and DNA 
sequencing to microscopy 
and advanced statistical 
analysis.
She has authored or co-
authored 10 publications, 
book chapters and confer­
ence papers, with additional manuscripts underway. Her 
research spans maize genetics, root architecture, genomics 
and crop improvement before she arrived in Canada to focus 
on canola.
She’s proficient in an unusually broad range of labora­
tory techniques, from sequencing and transcriptomics to 
quantitative PCR, microscopy, bioinformatics and statistical 
genetics.
What distinguishes Shruti isn’t simply technical ability. 
Her résumé reads less like that of a graduate student and 
more like someone already building a scientific career.
A more resilient future for Canadian crop 
research, turning a moment of research 
cuts into new tools for breeding soybeans 
that can withstand disease.
WHAT HE’S 
BUILDING:
A window into canola’s 
future — decoding what 
happens when drought 
and disease strike at the 
same time, so breeders 
can create crops ready for 
conditions they haven’t 
faced before.
WHAT SHE’S 
BUILDING:

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