SEPTEMBER 2018 GERMINATION.CA 17 What are some practical uses of this? Doug Miller: A Single Window gives us an opportunity to develop industry-enabled govern- ment systems. You’ve heard a lot of people talk about variety registration. Right now, it’s carried out in PDF form with the most recent improvement being dropdown menus. I think we can do better by incorporating this into the Single Window concept, so we have electronic forms that put data directly into the database. There’s potential to have tools like the following: Variety Registration Online Tool Used to complete the variety registration application. Upon receipt, data would be made available to the CFIA Variety Registration Office for review and final determination. End Result: varieties being entered into certification faster and reduced duplicate data entry. Plant Breeders Rights Online Tool Would work in a similar fashion to Variety Registration Tool. Possibility of linking variety registration process with PBR process — streamlining applications and reducing need for the same data to be provided through two different forms in two different databases that cur- rently don’t talk to each other. Isn’t there an online tool that already exists that we could use as a model? Doug Miller: Yes. An application to become a Registered Seed Establishment (RSE) would be created that industry could access. CFIA would review the application and make a final decision. This would be an example of a system that is already in production at the Canadian Seed Institute and could act as a precedent. Before we let you go — we’ve heard a lot about blockchain. What is it and how might it be used in a technological modernization/Single Window model? Doug Miller: I’ll refer you to Richard Freeman, manager of professional services for Ricoh Canada, to shed some light on that. Richard Freeman: In agriculture, blockchain promises to give you a definitive picture of your farm. Many farmers today use a combination of things to keep their data on record. These can include software, traditional paper filing systems, and even their own memory. These various recording methods differ in their effectiveness. What are the potential benefits of this? Richard Freeman: By providing one central source of farm data, blockchain helps to mini- mize record-keeping and the need to maintain record systems. Blockchain can really save time and energy. Most of the early uses of blockchain in ag involve supply chains, traceability and related issues; a blockchain ledger could keep a record of all data from planting, to har- vest, to storage and right through to delivery. Software that uses blockchain will run the same as software and apps growers are using currently, so you may not even realize it’s blockchain at work.