The summer of 2020 is going to be unlike any other. Our favourite events have been postponed, if not outright cancelled, and international holiday destinations have been scrubbed. Events that span sports, music, business, food, arts and culture have all been impacted. As economic restrictions begin to be eased in Read more…
How the lack of harvest labour may affect agriculture and the supply of food Canadians have previously known their grocers to have reliable supply chains, meaning that shelves are fully stocked and it’s a rare event when a store is out of a specific item. However, in the past 3 Read more…
Is the 35-year-old Patent Act getting the job done? The 150th anniversary of Canada’s intellectual property (IP) protection passed unnoticed in 2019. Over its history, the Patent Act has been revised and amended as required, recently amendments were made in March of 2020. A significant amendment was made to the Read more…
If GM crops sequestered more carbon, would students support these crops? The millennial generation has a future full of discussions and decisions to be made about climate change. Knowing the importance of climate change and its influence on consumer choices, Chloe Montreuil wanted to know whether students who supported the Read more…
U of S Undergrad thesis reviews student chemical knowledge on glyphosate Having the opportunity to supervise an undergraduate thesis is always a highlight during my years’ academic activities. In 2019, I supervised Miranda Emigh’s undergrad thesis that utilized a student survey to explore whether agronomy students perceived the course information Read more…
Do the views between Bachelors of Science and non-science oriented students differ? For the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to supervise a number of students working on their undergraduate thesis in the College of Agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan (USask). I’ve really enjoy working with these strong students, Read more…
Are GM Crops Contributing to Increased Rates of Female Education? The number one item on the United Nations’ (UN) list of Sustainable Development Goals is to reduce poverty. The UN estimates that 650 million people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than US$2/day. People in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are Read more…
The challenging dilemma between genomic sequencing and traditional knowledge Historically, to develop a new plant variety, there needed to be two distinct varieties to be able to cross-pollinate. If one variety was higher yielding and the other had strong disease resistance, they could be crossed with the goal of being Read more…
Are Canadian plant breeders utilizing the innovations of gene editing? It would be inaccurate to say that plant breeders in Canada are ‘a dime a dozen’. A rough estimate places the number of professional plant breeders in Canada at 500. Given the recent innovations available to plant breeders, we thought Read more…
The dawning of a new era in ag sustainability Who would have fathomed how significant a day in March 1995 would become in the history of Canadian agriculture? On March 14th, 1995, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) approved the two genetically modified (GM), herbicide tolerant varieties of canola for Read more…