WEBINAR: Economic Growth: Advancing Canadian Eastern Soft Red Winter and Canadian Eastern Hard Red Winter Wheat
Join researchers from the University of Guelph and Centre de Recherche Sur Les Grains (CÉROM) as they discuss their wheat research projects funded under the Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership AgriScience Program. This research focuses on advancing Canadian Eastern Soft Red Winter (CESRW) and Canadian Eastern Hard Red Winter (CEHRW) wheat breeding for Eastern Canada. Researchers at the University of Guelph are developing new soft red winter wheat varieties with high yield, strong winter hardiness and robust disease resistance, while research at CÉROM is enhancing breeding efforts through the application of genomic selection tools and approaches. The researchers will share how this research contributes to established and ongoing environmental, and climate sensitive practices being implemented by growers.
Dr. Helen Booker is an associate professor at the University of Guelph, and a Grain Farmers of Ontario wheat breeder. She leads the wheat program at the university, which focuses on improvement of winter wheat for production in Ontario. Dr. Booker’s research pinpoints germplasm, trait development and improving selection efficiency for breeding of winter wheat. Held at the Elora Research Station (ERS), the program includes field-scale experiments which have thousands of breeding lines.
Dr. Michel McElroy has been a crop breeder and researcher with CÉROM (Centre de recherche sur les grains) since 2017. He currently oversees the winter wheat improvement program at CÉROM with the goal of developing new superior varieties for the eastern Canadian market. As an extension of these activities, he also supervises projects on the interactions between wheat genetics, management and environment (GEM), particularly as they relate to nutrient efficiency and grain quality. Dr. McElroy has expertise in the areas of plant breeding/biology, plant genomics and experimental statistics.
