Why is this research important to Alberta?
With climate change, Canadian canola yields are increasingly threatened by heat during flowering, with temperatures above 28 °C causing 10–30% yield losses. This threatens farm profitability and the stability of Canada’s $43 billion canola industry. The project addresses key challenges by:
- Developing and testing a method to identify non-GMO heat-tolerant traits using mutagenesis, phenotyping, and genomics.
- Enabling seed companies to integrate these traits into elite varieties.
- Supporting Prairie producers and strengthening agricultural competitiveness.
The project aligns with Alberta’s priorities for climate-smart agriculture and sustainable crop production.
What is the goal of this work? How will genomics be used?
The main objective is to develop a pipeline for screening mutagenesis lines and identifying causal variants based on a combination of stress tolerance assays, breeding, and bioinformatics.
This project will:
- Develop a workflow that will be deployed on heat stress in canola as a proof of principle and can be easily re-deployed to focus on similar stresses in other crops.
- Refine the search for genes driving heat tolerance using data from adaptation in a wide range of non-crop species to identify putative targets.
Genomics is being used to:
- Curate lists of target genes from wild species.
- Identify markers associated with genomic regions harbouring new mutations for heat stress tolerance in mutagenesis lines.
This research involves contributions from the National Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and is conducted through a partnership between AgGene and the University of Calgary.
What are the expected benefits, and how will the research findings be shared?
The canola industry represents $43 billion annually for Canada, and improvements in breeding are essential to sustain production in the face of climate change.
Expected benefits include:
- Improved canola varieties with enhanced heat tolerance.
- Demonstrating a viable approach for identifying genes for stress tolerance in other crops.
Related Resources
Related information can be accessed through:
- Research Publication: Can wild plant adaptations help crops tolerate heat?