74 / SEEDWORLD.COM SEPTEMBER 2017 high school, according to Gijs van Rooijen, chief scientific officer for Genome Alberta. “What we see now is a fair amount of projects where high school students are doing the usual agronomic projects, but we’re seeing them start to incorpo- rate a lot of genetics into those projects,” he says. “They start to recognize that genetic analysis, especially the ability to get genomic analysis done quickly, is going to be a powerful tool in assisting plant breeders in developing their desired varieties much faster.” That means many of those students will end up becoming plant breeders themselves. “If you’re interested in seeds and plants, learning about and using these new tools will help you become success- ful in that field,” Van Rooijen says. “These students are only becoming more sophis- ticated in their thinking. They’re looking at the whole genome of the plant.” Individual genes are important, Van Rooijen explains, but the genetic factors that affect these genes are also impor- tant. In addition to genetics, there’s the concept of epigenetics — the effect of the environment on the genetics themselves. It’s a subject that’s important for up- and-coming plant breeders to familiarize themselves with. “If you are generating a new cultivar under highly stressed conditions, epige- netic markers are being placed on DNA, and that’s being inherited from genera- tion to generation,” he says. “That affects the seeds themselves.” In addition, students are looking at developing more sophisticated seed coat- ings that incorporate specific microbes or microbial environments. The sky is the limit for modern plant breeders, Van Rooijen adds. “You see projects at the national sci- ence fair where students are sequencing microbes typically found in and around plant environments,” he shares. Then they’re sifting through that information to find out what microbes are there, what they’re doing, and how seed companies can learn from that to come up with coat- ings containing microbes known to be beneficial for the plant to fight diseases, increase nutrient intake and improve water efficiency. Big Changes The new breeding environment makes things exciting for young people, and the chance to use these new tools to open doors that remained closed for thou- sands of years will only encourage more people to get into breeding, Nilsen says. Even at his young age, Nilsen continues to be inspired not just by older breeders who came before him, but by younger ones coming up behind him. He recently served as a mentor for some high school students working on a science fair project. “When I was starting out, we didn’t have a lot of the opportunities you see now,” he says. “A good example is these high school kids doing some fairly com- plex projects. Hearing their enthusiasm about what they do, it definitely rubs off on you.” Thankfully, the number of breeders coming out of university programs is on the rise, Gjuric notes. This is partly due to the work done at the PBA, which has attracted attention and serves to empha- size the important role plant breeders play. “For 15 or 20 years, universities weren’t training breeders in a classical way,” Gjuric notes. “Then when we did a study on the industry, we found there is a huge need for plant breeders. The PBA filled an immediate need. We took sci- entists and taught them traditional plant breeding concepts. “We showed that this classical training is very important. It’s not about old school versus new school. Our training at the PBA incorporates all the new tools. We’re seeing more and more universities paying attention to training plant breeders. The message from the industry is very strong: We need breeders.” The PBA now operates programs not only in North America but also in Europe, Asia and Africa. “In the U.S. alone, we need around 100 breeders a year just to replace people who are retiring. That’s a big number,” Gjuric says. Thankfully, the rise of technology will help to fill that void, Van Rooijen says. “Using some of these advanced skills young people are acquiring, we’ll see niche and value-added crops,” Van Rooijen says. “They might be smaller acreages, but we can use it as an oppor- tunity to diversify our economy. Seed traits that make processing easier are being developed more often and more rapidly. It used to be that breeders did their job with respect to yield, but there’s an opportunity to look at some process- ing traits that can be incorporated.” SW Rale Gjuric founded Haplotech and is the director of the Plant Breeding Academy. Kirby Nilsen is a graduate student at the University of Saskatchewan.