ONTARIO Agricultural CONFERENCE – From Good to Great!

Sep 15, 2023

The ONTARIO Agricultural CONFERENCE is excited to bring you to the next level with our 2024 conference (#OAgC24). Using the excellent feedback from attendees over the past years, the conference is expanding to offer even more opportunities for in-person learning, while maintaining the excellent access to sessions with our virtual format as well.

The 2024 conference will offer attendees the opportunity to join the conference In-Person at 3 separate locations on 3 different dates in January! Ridgetown, Waterloo and Kemptville will all offer In-Person options, while those choosing the virtual conference will be able to access sessions from their home computer and mobile devices, anywhere they happen to be. Of course, In-Person attendees at any location will have access to all virtual sessions as well, right up to March 31, 2024.

January 3, 2024, the Virtual Kickoff gets the conference underway. All participants are invited to participate virtually, with 4 key sessions streamed to viewers, as well as many ON DEMAND sessions available that day.

January 4 & 5, 2024, the Southwestern Agricultural Conference in Ridgetown offers the first In-Person opportunity. There will be four consecutive sessions every hour offering attendees a much greater selection than the 2023 conference. New this year is a special 2-hour combine clinic offered twice each day.

Returning, of course, is the ever popular “Taste of Ontario” Social on January 4, and our traditional trade show with the latest in crop production technology.

January 16, 2024, the Eastern Ontario Crop Conference hosts the second In-Person day of the conference in Kemptville, with 2 exciting concurrent sessions every hour, a trade show for great discussions and more!

January 19, 2024, the Midwestern Agricultural Conference wraps up the In-Person days in Waterloo, with a deep dive into Managing Soils, one of the most critical components of farming. Of course, there will be a trade show, and lots of excellent discussion.

Sessions from all 3 In-Person events will be recorded and included as ON DEMAND sessions as they become available, to allow all conference attendees access to the incredible information that will be delivered. All recorded sessions will be available virtually until March 31, 2024.

As well, back by popular demand, TEC Talk Tuesdays will allow participants to join the discussion as conference speakers dig into selected topics in more detail on Tuesday evenings through January and February, 7:27 pm sharp.

Check our website www.ontarioagconference.ca or follow us on twitter @OAgC24 and stay tuned for more details on what promises to be our best conference ever!!

Mark your calendars! Registration opens November 1, and In-Person capacity is limited, so early registration for these events is essential.

Source : UO Guleph

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.