The First Cut the Deepest for Alberta Winter Wheat Agronomy Research

Jun 30, 2023

Shock, dismay for those in involved as Alberta winter wheat agronomy program axed.

The origin of winter wheat in the West has a long, scrappy history. What was truly an overlooked, if-I-have-time crop choice for fall has been transformed in a generation to become one of the highest yielding, most agronomically reliable crops for farmers on the Prairies. There have been many key players that have helped raise the profile of winter wheat, especially in Alberta. The current face of this success is Brian Beres, a federal senior research scientist focused on agronomy at the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre. Of his 32 years in public service, 23 of those have focused on winter wheat agronomy research. Usually, though, winter wheat is looked at one way, and one way only.

“It’s a bit of an orphan crop,” says Beres. “It’s never going to that sort of premium export class of wheat or anything like that, but it’s got a lot of value to grain merchants, the stakeholders, and growers of winter wheat, yet it gets overlooked. A good, high protein winter wheat is often used to blend off shipments of CWRS to enhance supply to meet a certain customer spec with respect to grain protein or some other quality parameter.”

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Video: What’s at Stake in Every Slice | On The Brink: Episode 7

Six hundred Canadian farms grow grain for Warburton's under custom contract — and that partnership exists because of Canadian plant breeding. Now the man responsible for maintaining it is sounding the alarm.

Adam Dyck is the program manager for Warburton's Canada, a company that produces over two million loaves of bread a day for more than 20,000 retail locations across the UK. He's watched Canadian wheat deliver thirty years of yield gains and quality advancements that make it worth sourcing at scale — and shipping across the Atlantic. But he's also watching the investment conditions that produced those gains come under pressure. Dyck makes the case for a new funding mechanism that brings both public and private dollars into wheat breeding before Canada's competitive window starts to close.