At its annual meeting in Whistler, B.C., the Canadian Seed Trade Association is awarding the following people for moving their industry forward through creative, innovative and fearless thinking.
Plant Breeding and Genetics Award: Pierre Hucl
In the world of Canadian wheat, Pierre Hucl looms very large.
Hucl is the current senior spring wheat and canary seed breeder at the Crop Development Centre (CDC) in Saskatchewan. He is an internationally recognized innovative plant breeder, having released over 50 cultivars of wheat, canary seed and pulse crops. Several varieties he developed or co-developed have gained significant market share, including CDC Teal, CDC Plentiful, CDC Go and CDC Stanley.
His latest release, CDC Landmark, is one of the top-yielding varieties in the CWRS class and is expected to be a major cultivar in the 2018/2019 crop year. CDC Landmark was selected by a panel of the International Wheat Initiative to be one of 10 cultivars for genome sequencing. This paved the way to identify the gene sequence for Sm1, the only gene available for resistance to the orange blossom wheat midge.
He has also authored or coauthored around 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Much of his published work has focused on end-use quality in wheat and alternative uses for wheat.
According to Rod Merryweather, CEO of FP Genetics, Hucl ‘sdedication to CWRS wheat has enabled incredible opportunity and profit for the entire wheat value chain. His work in other crops also enables the diversification of crop production for many growers in Western Canada.
“I am amazed at Dr. Hucl’s ability to breed other exotic or specialty crops that fill niche markets. These crops include such things as canary seed, einkorn wheat, emmer and pulses. Hehas registered over 70 varieties to-date of which about half were niche crops. Without a champion like Dr. Hucl, these crops would not be a viable option for farmers in Western Canada,” Merryweather adds.
Hucl is also known as a valuable mentor for our next generation of plant breeders. Curtis Pozniak, wheat breeder at the Crop Development Centre in Saskatchewan, notes that Hucl has supervised 15 graduate students to completion, several of whom have become leaders in the research community.
“Pierre is one of the most dedicated scientists I know, and it is not unusual to find Pierre in the wheat plots well into the evening, or in the phytotron, crossing and conducting experiments on a wintery weekend,” says Pozniak. “His commitment to his breeding and research program, to his technical team, and to the department and college is second to none.”
Honorary Life Membership: Patty Townsend
If there’s a single word Patty Townsend is often associated with, it is “vision.”
Townsend originally joined the CSTA board of directors as vice-president with a primary focus on government, member and public relations, strategic planning and governance. In 2011, she became CEO. It was the beginning of dramatic change for the organization, which was founded in 1923.
“Over the years, Patty’s vision of what CSTA and the seed industry should be, coupled with her tenacity, drive and determination to get us there, has taken the organization to new levels on the domestic and international front. CSTA is now the go-to organization for issues in seed-related matters,” says Ellen Sparry, general manager for Ontario’s C&M Seeds.
Townsend focused on creating collaboration and consensus with producer organizations across the country — a key defining success of her time at CSTA. Her efforts in this area were highlighted by the formation of Partners in Innovation, bringing together grower and industry organizations in support of investment and innovation in plant breeding to support the future of Canadian agriculture. The positive support from grower organizations through Partners in Innovation became a cornerstone towards the success of achieving Bill C-18 that made Canada compliant at long last with globally agreed-upon UPOV 91 protocols.
“She managed to bring together farmers, government representatives, regulators and seed industry people into a great atmosphere looking for a win-win seed law. SAA was invited to be part of this process, and since then we have [recognized this] as a milestone to replicate in other countries that are transitioning from UPOV 78 to 91,” says Diego Risso, executive director of the Seed Association of the Americas.
It is Townsend ‘sstrength of character and belief in transparency that has allowed her to help open doors for the industry, building on the relationships she developed in her other roles across agriculture before joining the CSTA, says Stephen Denys, CSTA past-president.
“In addition to being aggressive in purpose and belief of what the industry stood for, she was an excellent listener who would act on the needs of the industry and the specific needs of members with an immediacy that recognized their importance, large or small, to the industry as a whole.”
When asked how the industry can best accomplish its goals, Townsend said the following:
“We don’t have the answers to everything, and we need to work with partners in the value chain to achieve those goals. It’s not easy to do that. If you can accommodate their interests and deal with the fears and the anxieties of the entire value chain and come up with something that will take you 99 per cent of the way, you’ve really made progress.”
Seed Achievement Award: Brian McNaughton
You don’t meet a pioneer every day, but if you’ve ever crossed paths with Brian McNaughton, you have.
McNaughton has been active in the Canadian seed industry since the mid 1980s, starting his career with Conti Seed in Carman, Man. He was initially charged with the task of setting up a comprehensive field trialing system across the Prairies. The next step was to figure out how to produce parent seed and commercial volumes of F1 hybrid canola seed. Until this time, the Canadian canola experience had been entirely based on open-pollinated varieties.
“Brian was THE pioneer in establishing an entirely new industry in southern Alberta — the hybrid canola seed production industry,” says Dorothy Murrell, McNaughton’s friend and herself an honorary life member of the CSTA.
“Each canola company has followed his lead and taken advantage of his developmental groundwork, whether it be with growers who were trained to manage the technical aspects of this new crop, or beekeepers he engaged and supported to provide pollination services — something that didn’t exist in Alberta before Conti Seeds and Brian came on the scene.”
McNaughton started HyTech Production Ltd. in 1998. HyTech has not stopped at canola. It has become involved in hybrid wheat, hybrid rye, sugar beets and mustard, and has expanded production regions from southern Alberta to British Columbia, Washington, California, and Chile. He was a founding member of the CSTA Hybrid Canola Committee, in which he remains engaged to this day.
What has made McNaughton so successful in fundamentally changing the seed production industry has been his work ethic, his integrity, his unwavering focus on quality, his relentless pursuit of knowledge about hybrid systems, his enthusiastic uptake of other crop kinds in the HyTech portfolio with the same pursuit of knowledge on which to base production practices, and his commitment to continuous improvement in his company and in the industry, Murrell adds.