The Integrated Crop Agronomy Cluster focuses on key research

Jun 06, 2023

Results from eight research activities are included in the Integrated Crop Agronomy Cluster (ICAC) summary document.

The new report outlines the projects which range from soil health to herbicide resistance and climate change adaptation.

Some of the other projects focused on the coordination of crop insects and disease monitoring, assessing and managing spray drift, developing a risk model for mitigating Fusarium head blight, development, and management of productive, resilient, and sustainable cropping.

The total value of research under the five-year Cluster was over $9 million,.

The Canadian Agricultural Partnership (CAP) AgriScience Cluster program contributed $6.3 million, $1.6 million came from Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF), and $1.1 million from industry partners.

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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.