The First Sixteen Podcast - EP 031

Jodi: I always say we'll never be without a job because everything is changing so quickly that we're going to have to be responsive, quite responsive. And that's the job of the plant breeder is to look 10, 20, 30 years in advance, and to recognize the issues that are coming around and making sure that we're ready with products that will help farmers solve this issue.

Kirk: That’s Dr. Jodi Souter, farmer and plant breeder from Northern Saskatchewan. She is co-founder of a private plant breeding company, J4 Agri-Science. And she brings a unique view. She grew up on a large grain farm. She has also travelled the world as a Nuffield Scholar to study how different countries support their plant breeders.

Marie-France: And she’s going to share her unique insights with us today.

So, welcome to the First Sixteen, a podcast about innovations in agriculture and agri-food. I am your co-host, Marie-France Gagnon.

Kirk: I’m your other co-host, Kirk Finken.

Marie-France: Today, we are not doing the usual. We’re not talking about a specific innovation in plant breeding.

Kirk: Instead, we are exploring the plant breeding continuum or the proverbial sandbox in which Canadian plant breeders are working. You will hear that word a couple of times in this episode, the continuum. It’s meant to describe the whole process of plant breeding -- from fundamental science to commercialization. The sandbox contains the traditional activities of plant breeding like pre-breeding, germplasm development, and the breeding of field-ready varieties.

Marie-France: But with an incredible number of experts in fields such as genetics, phenomics, data science, and more making contributions to plant breeding, this sandbox has gotten bigger and more ground breaking. And it’s not always well understood outside of the scientific community. There are some misconceptions Kirk.

Kirk: Yeah.

Marie-France: And because everyone wants to know about what is going on at AAFC in terms of plant breeding, nobody better to do that with than François Eudes, he is our Breeding Innovation and Crop Germplasm Development Lead.

Kirk: He will explain why and how the federal government actively invests in advanced fields like genomics, phenomics, and crop genetics. He will illustrate the rapid changes in plant breeding in recent years, explain how AAFC collaborates with, and supports, universities, and the private sector, people like, Jodi Souter.

Marie-France: Jodi, welcome to the First Sixteen. Can you tell me how you got into farming and plant breeding?

Jodi: Yeah so my history with agriculture goes back many, many generations. I’m a daughter of farmers, and they were children of farmers and children of farmers and children of farmers.

I always had a love of the grain side of the farm. I enjoy the animals as well, but it was the grain side of the farm that I knew was my calling. At a very young age, my mom tells a story all the time that she bought me a new jacket for kindergarten, and I was excited to wear this jacket. She sent me outside and found me 5 minutes later in the back of the combine, fixing the chopper with grandpa. And there goes the new jacket.

Marie-France: I love that, that’s sweet! So how did you go from grain farming to plant breeding?

Jodi: My parents were quite smart in that they encouraged us to leave the farm, make sure that we get out and get other experiences. And if we decided our love for the farm was strong, that, you know, we could be involved in, in whatever way we wanted to. So I went to university and I got a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture.

When I was in university, I was recognizing how many of the crops that are so important to us on our farm or in, in Western Canada in general, only have one or maybe two breeding programs dedicated to them and that was a pretty big concern of mine because Canada is such a varied place with different challenges and different geographies and different hopes and, and different marketing abilities and, um, just so many differences that I saw that, you know, a flax grower up in our area and a flax grower down in Leader, Saskatchewan would need a completely different type of plant.

So I had that entrepreneurial background from the farm, and I saw just a need for increased activity in some of these crops. And, and so I decided to start an independent company looking at that.

Marie-France: Its not a easy thing starting a company. So were you scared or did you just jump right in?

Jodi: Yeah to be quite honest this might sound strange, but I'm actually quite risk averse. But we just saw that there was such a need, and it was very, very scary. I live very much by the old quote. I'm not sure who originally said it, but if you might not be able to see what's at the top of the staircase, but just take your first step. Where plant breeding gets even more scary or more risky, I suppose, is that it's such a long time frame to commercialization of your product. On average it takes about 12 years from first cross to commercialization.

Kirk: That’s a great quote… So what types of crops are you focusing on?

Jodi: We say we are a pulse and specialty crops breeding company. So I specialize in lentils, flax, fava beans, and we're looking at other crops at the moment. We really were looking at the crops that were underserved. That’s why flax was one of our first crops of interest. It went through a little bit of a, of a tough time in the early 2000. And our industry kind of shut down in the early 2000. And because of that, all of the flax breeding programs almost shut down. So we went from 3 or 4 flax breeding programs to now, currently, there's about a half of a plant breeding program for flax, but it's still, in our mind, quite a major crop. It's a 4 million acre crop, and there was only one breeding program at the time that we started.

But what we are doing is we are trying to develop crop varieties for farmers in western Canada to grow that have some advantage over previous varieties, whether that be advantages for the farmers, or new marketing potential, or increased nutrition or processing capacity or something along those lines.

Marie-France: I read in an article that you describe yourself as occupying a "fourth lane" in plant breeding. From what I understand of this concept, this four-lane road includes public sector programs in one lane, universities in another, large companies in a third, and then companies smaller like yours in the fourth. So what that fourth lane entails?

Jodi: The fourth lane is small independent companies, homegrown companies, startups, Family run plant breeding companies that most of the other countries that I studied during my Nuffield Scholarship had that we weren't utilizing or weren't utilizing very well. They can be so impactful because often they're entrenched in the system and so they can see, you know, right in front of them some of the problems that exist. And they can be quite efficient and solve some of these problems quite quickly. And so that's always where I focus because that's where my company would land, is, is an independent startup, um, within this lane.

And so I've tried to promote that, you know, these homegrown these blood sweat and tears grit companies can actually do a lot if we allow them to exist.

I am actually on my family's farm right now. Today's the going to be our last day of harvest. We're just waiting for the dew to burn off, and I'll get on the big combine. And then this weekend, I will be out in my plots on my little combine, finishing those as well. So I'm still very entrenched in both the development side of agriculture and being a primary producer as well.

I've been trying to discuss a lot with people the hurdles that we've been hitting with our company and seeing if we can modify regulations or modify systems to allow people like me to exist a little bit easier, in hopes that one day, you know, there's ten companies like mine that are working on some of these crops.

Kirk: What do you see as the biggest challenges there?

Jodi: The biggest one for us and for everybody, I think, is a way to capture revenue. So a lot of the countries that I looked at had royalty collection mechanisms. And we are testing a few out in Canada, but we need to be able to make money on our inventions so that we can put that money back into our program and make new inventions, which will be good for the farmer, too, because if we can increase competition, we can start to vote with our dollar and make sure, the companies that are breeding our crops have their nose to the grindstone.

Regulations are a big one, and we see that in our system because we've had public plant breeding from government or academia. Regulations are often written with them in mind or with the big companies that, you know, have a lot of money that can put a lot of time and effort into the development.

There's so few plant breeders in the world that I think sometimes people don't really understand what we do or why we're doing it, and that a lot of us are were drawn to the career because we just wanted to feed the world, or we wanted to help farmers.

Marie-France: Going back to the lane metaphor. How can all these programs work together? Public, Academic, large multination and smaller breeders?

Jodi: Canada has had a very historied, government breeding programs, which, you know, through the 1900s were super important and getting a lot of these crops off the ground. And they did amazing jobs. And we have the academic lane. So my alma mater, the U of S has the CDC, which produces and commercializes crop varieties in Western Canada. So those are the 2 lanes that in Canada we really utilize a lot.

In some crops where they've been able to control genetics or the IP through genetics, like canola, in western Canada, because it's a hybrid crop. Large multinational companies have come in and, and are breeding canola and canola put shoes on my feet my entire life growing up. So, they've been very successful, and we would absolutely not go back to the varieties we were growing 25 years ago, let alone 10 years ago in canola. So that's kind of been really a really good example to watch of what an investment can do in some of these crops.

So it's really making sure that the industry is ready, in supporting alternative options and making sure that as these programs go into more of a pre breeding focus or as these crops, you know, need a little bit more attention that there are people ready to, take up the torch.

Kirk: And so that brings us back to the fourth lane. How do you feel about more small companies like yours in the plant breeding space?

Jodi: We definitely need it, I do come from a sports background, and as much as it's fun to be the only person on the track at any given time or on the treadmill, you're never going to run your fastest race unless somebody is beside you, and sometimes you need to lose a few to realize what you can actually do. So I think, yeah, we just we just need to keep stimulating that. I do hope through us starting, we remove a few of the barriers and then can help others start and in 20 years, hopefully there's quite a few of us.

[Transition music.]

Marie-France: I was so very inspiring to hear from Jodi. Alright Kirk now for a lane change. Let’s shift our focus to our lane and discuss AAFC. Before we get to our interview with François Eudes we need to cover a couple of science terms we are going to hear from him. We mentioned the “breeding continuum” at the top of the show. Lets give everybody a run down of what that is.

Kirk: The plant breeding continuum. Like I said at the top, the continuum refers to the process from idea to commercialization. And it refers to the different methods used along the way to create new plant varieties, ranging from traditional techniques to modern technologies.

When we talk about traditional techniques, it means pre-breeding, germplasm development, and the breeding of field-ready varieties. It’s selective and it breeds desired traits from parent plants. Modern technologies on the other hand includes genomics, genetics, phenomics, physiology, plant nutrition, agronomy, data science, and more.

Marie-France: And François will refer to some of these new disciplines and other terms. For example, Genomics. Genomics is the study of all the DNA in this case a plant, including its genes and their functions. It looks at how these genes work together to influence traits, health, and growth.

Kirk: Exactly, ok, are we good?

Marie-France: Good to grow.

Kirk: Oh my god, my eyes rolling.

[Transition music]

Kirk: So François, it seems that people in our sector want to know if AAFC continuing its plant breeding programs? Where are we at? What do we what are we doing?

François Eudes: Yes, absolutely. AAFC is committed to the development of field-ready variety and make contributions along what we call the continuum of breeding. So yes plant genetics is very important. But there is other science disciplines. And with the modernization of plant breeding, we see a number of new science disciplines that have emerged in the past, 10, 20 years, in particular genomics. That deeper knowledge of how a plant is structured and how it works.

So we are committed to all along, in some cases up to developing the field ready variety. In other case, we recognize we're not the only one player and others have a capacity also to finish that field ready variety and we concentrate our effort in a little bit more upstream so that foundational science, better understanding how the genome function, discover new genes that are important for would be important for plant breeding that we would like to see in the modern varieties.

Kirk: I imagine, the role of agriculture and agrifood Canada in plant breeding has also changed in those last 20 years. How exactly has it changed?

François Eudes: It certainly has changed. And first of all, as a national science organization is very important for a AAFC, to have the science capacity in this emerging areas. So it started with the investment in people. Recruiting scientists in these new emerging area. So we built significant capacity in genomics and other science disciplines that, contribute to feeding the innovation pipeline in that breeding continuum.

Everything we do, needs people and, needs really great people, science is constantly evolving. So these, science experts, our scientists and their support team, technicians, the students have to keep up with the evolution of science.

Plant breeding is a well-established process. It allowed to move innovations to the producers field. It allowed to make incremental gain, developing plant varieties that have, a higher yield or have a better disease package. And so, um, would perform better, under the various stressors in the farmers field.

Plant breeding can also, be transformative. So within AAFC, our scientists are focusing on two aspects. This incremental gain on the merit of plant variety. The next one is going to be better. So it helps producers having the a newer genetics, a better genetics than the previous one. But some of the gain may not be just incremental. It could be transformative.

This next innovation that we're going to look for, breakthrough in nitrogen, biological fixation. So that would reduce our nitrogen and synthetic nitrogen input, which is which are costly at the farm level but also associated with greenhouse gases. Require these new innovations and ideas.

And only people can come up with these new ideas, these innovation. The next great success will have a name behind it, the same as the past success. There are names behind these innovations. It’s people that make the difference.

Marie-France: You talked about AAFC's effort to increase the focus on upstream fundamental research and leave space for the industry for downstream variety development. So what we need to understand is us, the public sector research is trying to be complementary to what the industry is doing. In addition to that goal, can you share with us a specific example of something AAFC is working on in those areas?

François Eudes: It’s important for us to ask what is truly the role of public service. And it's certainly not to be a direct competitor, but rather the innovation partner. So by focusing a bit more on upstream research we can move innovation to other players as well. Either use it and reuse it internally, but also move it to other players, which is going to be helping them being successful.

We invest in an area where the private sector and other players in Canada may not be investing or be present. And so I mentioned the investment we made in people as well as in science capacity, a bit more upstream, this emerging science area.

We are also investing at a stage of the innovation development where there is a higher level of risk.

If we look at the success of the canola crop in Canada, I think it's, uh, telling of, the importance of AAFC contribution in, in agriculture. We looked at a plant that is, a plant species that is not a crop yet and make these investment to turn that plant species into the crop that we know today. And no one else will probably have been able to do this. We'll commit the resource to develop these plant species into a crop.

Kirk: You have said one advantage AAFC has is time, we can afford a 10 to 20 year commitment to projects. Why is that so important?

François Eudes: First of all we invest in people we tend to retain people for a long period of time. Scientists likes to make their career, uh, within AAFC for 30, 35 years, sometimes more. It does take time for them to become these world experts and, uh, to become so, uh, successful, uh, knowledgeable in the work they do that we see this flow of innovation. So it's a it's a long term game. And again, the public sector can make that long term commitment, which is not, uh, something that the private sector would necessarily do.

With that long term commitment, we can look at some genetic and traits that are more complex. We know it's not going to be a quick win. I'm thinking that nitrogen biological fixation, photosynthesis, which is done by every plant. Despite the limited genetic diversity around photosynthesis, this is a metabolic process we would like to further improve so the plant is more efficient in capturing atmospheric CO2 and putting it into either the grain we harvest the root system and in the soil to sequester carbon. So these two examples of traits takes a lot of time to, to work on.

Marie-France: That is very insightful. Those really are examples of transformative changes if they are possible. So back to our role as an innovative partner to the sector. AAFC is able to focus on less profitable but still important crops such as low-acreage crops. François explain to us why this is important?

François Eudes: So maybe I can come back to the forage crop. So, yeah, from upstream research up to the market. This is an example where there is what we call a market failure. Essentially, there is no private entity. You can generate a return on investment to sustain, that long term investment. It's a 15 years, 20 year effort, but there is no revenue to generate because producers would seed that forage crop every three years, maybe every 20 years. So that's the reason why AFFC has to be committed all along the way to up to the development of field ready variety.

We know some crops tend to dominate, the landscape in different regions in Canada. So you know, in Quebec, it's corn and soybean. In the prairie region tend to be canola and wheat, but producers need other crop species in their rotation.

The rotations are very important for a breaking disease cycles, for example. So even if a crop has a small acreage, it may play a significant contribution to the success of the other crops and the sustainability of these other crops so we are looking at the system.

Kirk: I am so glad that we had Jodi and François as guests. Even for us who work in the ag sector, plant breeding feels like the work of monks and nuns. It is a foundational part of our sector. It is complex and evolving. And it is, like, a bit in the dark.

Marie-France: I think back to the comment about this field demanding patience, perseverance and long term vision from those who enter it.

Kirk: Indeed.

Marie-France: And as Jody reminded us “you might not be able to see what's at the top of the staircase, but just take your first step.”

Kirk: That reminds me of our motto…

Marie-France: To try something new?

Kirk: Uh huh. Try something new. Yeah. And take that first step.