b'me an opportunity to bring a rural perspective and educate urban-dwelling students and help reverse the societal pushback preventing tech-nologies in plant breeding and biotech from being deployed due to lack of scientific literacy. When I read up on the history of McGill and agricultural research here, I found out about how iconic this institution is to Montreal, to Quebec, to Canada and to the world, and that motivated me to become a part of it right here in the middle of French Canada. It also gave me an opportunity to pursue international agriculture, which is an area I am quite passionate about.MZ: Why pulse breeding?VHV: I decided I wanted to focus on pulse breeding and genet-ics because: Pulses are an important staple food, not just increasingly for Canadians but also for over a billion people, largely in the developing world. We are facing a worldwide water crisis, and with more and more densely populated cities reaching Day Zero (like Mexico City or Cape Town) in the next few decades, water will increase in value and by consequence so will food. Pulses are already highly water efficient and are one of the solutions to the problem, but Canada needs to be ready with technology to address that problem.Canada has its own climate change issues, such as increased precipitation. In Quebec pulses are increasingly becoming more important for consumers and more grow- Valerio Hoyos-Villegas is a plant breeder at McGill University.ers are getting into the business, so I realized I could use my background in dry bean breeding as an opportunity to provideterm interest is to use my skills in quantitative and population farmers with technology in these crops here in Quebec so thatgenetics to address the longstanding question: What is the role the sector can grow.of evolutionary deleterious mutations in the genetic architecture of complex traits of self-pollinated species? And does purg-MZ: Tell us about the work coming out of your program anding them increase fitness in breeding populations? Gaining an some recent accomplishments. understanding of this component of self-pollinated populations VHV: We are just getting started. My program is aimed atand genomes will open a new avenue for how we manage developing pulse crop varieties. At the moment we are focus- breeding programs in self-pollinated species and enable us to ing on building our dry bean germplasm and collaborating inunlock another piece in order to maximize the components of a variety of market classes. We are focusing on yield, but alsothe genetic gain equation.quality and white mold physiological tolerance in the long term. But we would like to expand to other pulses in time. AsMZ: If you had $10 million, your idea is to create an endow-I said, we are in the process of constructing a field phenomicsment for research and training for ag scientists in developing platform that is designed with plant breeding applications incountries. Why would you do this? What benefits do you see mind. Current environmental changes are having a big impactcoming out of this?on agriculture and we want these conditions to determine whatVHV: I think education is the main way that Canada can contrib-we phenotype for using our platform. The future of the easternute to the sustainable economic growth of developing countries. provinces requires that we address traits like leaf ultrastructuralWe have an excellent educational system here, but it is impor-traits for cold hardiness early in the season; water use effi- tant that we make it accessible in a way that it enables training ciency/thermal imaging for midseason drought; oxidative stressto be translational to solve local problems. When people are response or canopy architecture strength under flooding toler- empowered with the tools, they can have a great impact. Plant ance late in the growing season. breeders, for example, have very measurable impacti.e. as cultivars released or hectares planted, or seed sold. As trace-MZ: Wow, thats a lot to bite off all at once! ability increases around the world, plant breeders will be able VHV: I am aware that as a scientist I need to strike a balanceto measure impact to the effect of an individual variety and between practical plant breeding and interesting, game-chang- the number of consumers it reached, and this is a tremendous ing science. So, beyond my plant breeding program, my long- avenue that new scientists in developing countries can use to INTERNATIONAL EDITION 2020 GERMINATION.CA 3'