Professorship will focus on winter wheat breeding

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

A $1 million joint investment by the Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) and SeCan has allowed the University of Guelph to create a professorship in plant breeding focusing on winter wheat. Guelph’s associate dean for external relations, Rene Van Acker, described today’s announcement as “a front-end investment on the part of GFO and SeCan” allowing the university to go ahead with a “permanent, tenure track position.”

He said the search committee is struck and has met once. “We’re already doing a soft search, so a number of people on the committee have already started to tap into their networks.”

The search, he said, could attract candidates from anywhere in the world. The successful candidate, expected to be in place in the spring of 2014, will teach, work with graduate students and do research, primarily in the development of new winter wheat varieties.

Van Acker said the announcement is timely, partly because a number of wheat breeders working for the federal government have retired recently and have not been replaced.  The same is true for a professor at the University of Guelph, plant geneticist Duane Falk who retired last year.

”Because of all the changes, in particular the non-replacement in the federal government, there is a very definite need for winter wheat breeding,” Van Acker said.

In a news release, GFO chair Henry Van Ankum said the position was created “to address the acute need for cereal breeding, especially winter wheat breeding in Ontario.” Since 2010, the release said, four wheat breeders retired, “two of whom were dedicated to winter wheat and whose research was critical to the establishment of winter wheat as a key crop in the province.”

Crosby Devitt, GFO manager of research and market development, said wheat, especially winter wheat, is critical to the three-crop rotation in Ontario.

“We always need new genetics because you always have to be continually improving what you’ve got,” he said, adding that improving yield potential and having good disease resistance are important considerations. In wheat, he said, there is the additional need to have varieties that match the needs of the milling industry. BF