Keep it Clean's Year-Round Resources

Nov 03, 2022

5 Simple Tips to Keep Your Crops Ready for Market

The quality and reputation of Canadian canola, cereals and pulses are amongst the best in the world, and Canadian growers work hard to produce crops to the highest standard.

An important part of maintaining the trust of our domestic processors, grain buyers and export customers relies on on-farm practices and our industry meeting the residue tolerances of our global customers.

To ensure your crops are market-ready, the Canola Council of Canada, Cereals Canada and Pulse Canada work together through the Keep it Clean initiative to provide growers with these 5 Simple Tips:

TIP#1 | Use Acceptable Pesticides Only
Only apply pesticides that are registered for use on your crop in Canada, are acceptable to both domestic and export customers, and won’t create trade concerns.

TIP#2 | Always Read and Follow the Label
Always follow the label for application rate, timing and pre-harvest interval (PHI). Applying pesticides or desiccants without following the label's directions is illegal and may result in unacceptable residues.

TIP#3 | Manage Disease Pressures
An integrated disease management plan is important to maintain yield and profitability and can help protect Canada’s reputation as a high-quality supplier of canola, cereals and pulses.

TIP#4 | Store Your Crop Properly
Proper storage helps to maintain crop quality and keeps the bulk free of harmful cross-contaminants.

TIP#5 | Deliver What You Declare
The Declaration of Eligibility affidavit is a legal assertion that your crop is the variety and/or class you have designated and it was not treated with the crop input products specified in the declaration.

When you follow the Keep it Clean 5 Simple Tips and consider market access at all points in the year, you help Canadian agriculture continue to meet the standards of our export customers.

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Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”