Doug Cattani is the perennial grains breeder and agronomist at the University of Manitoba (U of M), with over 35 years of perennial grass breeding and perennial grass and legume seed production experience.

Cattani holds a bachelor of science in agriculture and a master’s degree in plant breeding, both from the U of M, and a PhD in plant production ecology from Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands. He lives in Winnipeg, MB, and is married with three children and four grandchildren.

Where did you work before the U of M?

Before the U of M, I worked at provincial and federal government levels, in private industry and at another academic institution.

What is the best part about your job?

The best part of my job is being outside in the field interacting with plants and producers.

What got you interested in this area of work?

My first summer job as a university student was with the forage breeder here at the U of M and they happened to be working on seed production in perennials. After that, I worked for a year on vegetables and a year on wheat and barley, but I’ve predominately worked on perennials and I thoroughly enjoy it. A major focus has been on seed production and breeding for seed production.

Tell us a bit about what you’re working on at U of M.

From a research perspective, because I work with perennials, we are worried about what is happening 365 days of the year. Freezing rain, no snow, too much snow, all the problems people are worried about when dealing with perennials. Generally, from snow melt to when snow comes to stay, we are in the field evaluating our crop, watching it to determine ae we getting disease? Are there insects? Winterkill? We are looking at all the factors that go into the long-term survival of a perennial.

We are looking into the potential of adding intermediate wheatgrass as a perennial grain into western Canadian cropping systems. Earlier work brought about the selection of adapted materials for Western Canada, and current research looks to move the breeding along to traits with agronomic importance to sustainable production systems.

Currently, I am working with Dr. Matthew Bakker, U of M, in this research and we are looking at the genetics related to Fusarium head blight resistance and to seed size, as well as agronomic production systems for integration into a “typical” crop rotation in Western Canada. Practices identified for integration into typical crop rotations are especially promising for Manitoba, where precipitation tends to be higher than Alberta or Saskatchewan.

In the winter, I also teach courses, which have ranged from general agricultural production through to genetics, plant breeding, forage production and grassland science.

What can you say about the value of farmers providing funding and support to your organization?

In our system it’s almost imperative we get farmers’ support. For me personally, I am working on developing a new commodity, so the willingness of farmers to support research looking to potentially change the landscape of farming in Western Canada is critical for me to be able to move forward.

It also provides contact with farmers to bounce ideas off, have them test the materials and to work out the glitches of production on research-scale plots. Even though I have run experiments where our individual plot size is close to three acres, we are still not on a farm-scale production level. Having farmers grow it and work with it on their farm provides us with a better idea of what some of the challenges will be and, potentially, some of the best practices we could utilize.

How does that funding and support directly benefit farmers?

Hopefully, there is the potential for a new crop in the future – one that will aid in the aspects that have become quite popular in last couple years (like soil health). It’s generally accepted that having perennials on the landscape allows for less soil erosion, better nutrient and water utilization, and once established, you have ground cover 365 days of the year.

I think it would fit well with the current soybean, canola, wheat system that a lot of farmers are using. It will maintain soil health throughout the whole cycle of having the annual and perennial crops in a rotation. There are a number of potential benefits that could accrue from utilizing a perennial in a rotation.

It is important to understand this research is in its infancy. When I was an undergraduate student, I was told it was a stupid idea and it would never work. Then 25-30 years later, this idea came out again and there were people willing to work on it, seeing the potential direction of where the earth is heading and where production agriculture has taken us. We should be able to make progress over the next couple of decades to where we have something that will be tangible. Think of soybeans 20 years ago. How many acres did we have? Look at how much research has gone into getting soybeans to Western Canada. There is a risk, but there are definitely rewards in this type of research.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

I enjoy photography to an extent.

What gets you most excited about your work?

The potential of it and seeing the progress we’ve made. I’ve been doing this for 12 years and when I started, Manitoba Forage Seed Association industry reps said with intermediate wheatgrass they could average around 500 lbs/acre for maybe three years and then that’s it. The tests we just ran over three years (two of them very dry), we averaged over 600 lbs/acre a year. In this last year, with our best management program, we were at 750 lbs/acre in the third production year.

Just employing selection within Manitoba and some of our production methods we’ve been able to bump the yields up approximately 50 per cent. Quite encouraging that in a relatively short period of time, taken what industry told me was the norm, to now be up through relatively trying years and have results I am quite happy with. I see there is more potential.

What are you excited about for the future of your sector/agriculture?

We’re always going to need agriculture. I see agriculture is probably at the forefront in a lot of ways of taking climate change seriously. The industry understands the risks to production and realizes the need to continue to be productive at the current levels, but to do it in a manner that has less impact on our environment. Agriculture is taking a lead in a lot of this.

The road to perennializing some aspects of production agriculture is being led by the Land Institute out of Salina, Kansas. There is currently research taking place on six continents, with perennial rice being the largest success story to date. Research is needed in order to make progress and with the younger researchers becoming interested, we are seeing an influx of new ideas and newer skill sets into this research area. Researchers from four of the continents recently co-operated to evaluate some newer materials to get a better understanding of adaptation and how climate change could influence where different perennial crops could be grown.

David Whetter is owner and agri-environmental consultant at AgriEarth Consulting Ltd., a company focused on adding value and providing environmental solutions for agriculture across the Canadian Prairies and beyond. He earned his bachelor’s degree in agroecology and master’s degree in soil science at the University of Manitoba (U of M).

As a soil scientist and professional agrologist, Whetter has been providing innovative, effective and practical agricultural-environmental solutions to the industry for over 20 years. Much of this work has been focused on soil-water management, largely for irrigation and drainage projects. Whetter lives in Winnipeg with his wife Michelle and their two daughters, Ellie and Emerson.

Where did you work before AgriEarth Consulting?

Following graduation from U of M, I worked with AXYS Environmental, a consulting firm based out of Calgary. I was the first hire for AXYS Agronomics in 2001, a division focused on agri-environmental issues. I was hired by Jim Hicks, who quickly became an important career and life mentor for me. The company was bought out five years later by Jacques Whitford and then again in 2009 by Stantec Consulting. At Stantec Consulting, I was the business centre managing leader for environmental services in Winnipeg. While I enjoyed this role, the interactions with my team and the experience it brought, I had slowly drifted away from my passion, agriculture. That was a driver behind the decision to refocus on supporting sustainable growth in agriculture and launch AgriEarth Consulting in 2017. I also wanted to be around home more to be able to enjoy time with my two young kids, and starting my own business allowed for that.

What got you interested in this area of work?

My roots are in agriculture. My dad grew up on a family farm at Chain Lakes near Dand, MB, and my dad and brother continue to farm together today in seed production near Hartney, MB. They are the co-operating producers in our current soil and water management research project. While I am not involved in the farm, this research I am working on has been really great for me, as it has brought me back to the farm and enabled me to work a little more closely with my dad and brother.

Tell us a bit about what you’re working on at AgriEarth Consulting.

I support a range of clients through various evaluations of their soil landscapes to support agri-environmental planning, permitting and management. Most of my work is related to irrigation and drainage. For example, if someone wants to develop an irrigation program in Manitoba, they need an Environment Act License. I would support them through that process. More recently, I’ve been getting involved in drainage as it becomes a more prominent practice in Western Canada.

I have recently been working on some large-scale irrigation feasibility studies in Saskatchewan. Through this process, I provide information to the province on how to prioritize areas for irrigation development around their existing reservoir system.

Another interesting project I completed recently was providing agricultural leadership to an engagement program on First Nation involvement in agriculture across the Prairie region.

I am also involved in work for industrial clients such as Manitoba Hydro and others developing infrastructure, advising on how to develop their projects while minimizing the impacts to agricultural land use and production systems.

Research is a growing component of my work. The Best practices for soil and water quality, excess water management and drought resiliency in an undulating soil-landscape in southwestern Manitoba project is a significant component. We are interested in better understanding how tile drainage performs in variable soil landscapes in southwestern Manitoba, an area representative of a broad region of the Canadian Prairies.

In this research we are looking at how water flows through tile at different landscape positions, as well as the quality of the water coming out of the tiles, including nitrogen, phosphorus and salts. It is our hope that outcomes of this research will help industry make drainage management decisions in the variable landscapes across the region. We’re also adding edge-of-field treatments to the primary project next year. Those are practices specifically geared towards improving water quality before it leaves the field. Ultimately, we are interested in field-scale learnings on practical and cost-effective treatment practices for Western Canada.

What can you say about the value of farmers providing funding and support to your organization?

We couldn’t do this type of applied research without them. Their co-operation, collaboration and investments allow this type of meaningful research to be done. It is my hope that this type of research project, with a strong knowledge transfer and demonstration component, can help bridge the gap between lots of good research that is being done in the lab or at a fine, plot scale, and what farmers experience on the land and some of the challenges they face. I think our co-operating producers realize and understand that and we appreciate their contributions and willingness to participate. We also appreciate their patience in accommodating our activities in their field and care in working around our many monitoring equipment installations throughout their field!

How does that farmer funding and support directly benefit farmers?

In the case of our current soil and water management research project, we aim to provide information that is directly applicable to understanding effectiveness of beneficial management practices for dealing with the double-edged sword of excess water and drought limitations that farmers in these variable landscapes experience. Producer funding and access to their land and production information allows for this type of practical, applied research with the objective of providing value to farmers’ operations.

In terms of value, it’s a longer-term outlook getting to the point where we better understand how to apply best practices for soil and water management in these variable landscapes. But again, we really appreciate their commitment and hope they feel they are getting good information back through the process, or at least see the potential for that as the research activities and monitoring efforts progress.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

I keep active with recreational hockey, and our family loves to mountain bike and ski/snowboard. These sports get us outside enjoying nature all year. Travelling and exploring our amazing world is a big passion I share with Michelle. Our travel adventures have taken a bit of a back seat thanks in part to COVID-19, but the bug is still there, and we look forward to continuing to explore the world together with our kids.

What gets you most excited about your work?

The opportunities in agriculture. I’ve been involved in agriculture environmental consulting for over 20 years and just in last two to three years there has been a whole new energy. Unfortunately, much of this is connected to lots of the challenges we are having around climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and more extreme weather, but agriculture is getting a raised profile and an increased level of importance – not just as a means of producing food, but as part of the solution to some of the environmental challenges we are having. This is exciting to me and translates into opportunities for the type of work I do. I believe the future of agriculture is bright and there are lots of opportunities to improve on the already great work farmers and industry are doing to feed the world and protect our soil landscapes.

Who or what inspires you?

It’s always inspiring to see how farmers manage to do what they do, year in and year out. Dealing with the various levels of adversity – from uncertainty in markets, to dynamic weather conditions they have to deal with – they keep doing it.

I have always felt fortunate for the support I have received from family, friends and colleagues throughout my career. I mentioned a mentor of mine, Jim Hicks, who sadly passed away 13 years ago. He had a profound impact on me and inspires me to this day to enjoy life to the fullest – focus on family and loved ones first, travel and enjoy good food, and to work with passion but not lose sight of what is most important in life.

Having young kids also changes one’s perspective. That ties into looking forward and looking for better ways of doing things. They keep me inspired to keep doing what I think is my best part in that.

Visit agriearth.ca for more information.

Tyler Wist joined Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) Saskatoon Research and Development Centre (RDC) as an entomologist in January 2016. Wist earned his master’s degree in specialty crops from the University of Saskatchewan (USask) and completed his PhD at the University of Alberta. Before completing his master’s degree, he was an undergraduate at USask and worked for the city of Saskatoon in pest control where he got his passion for controlling insects. Wist lives in Saskatoon with his wife and three daughters.

Where did you work before the Saskatoon RDC?

Before I was working at the Saskatoon RDC, I was working at the Saskatoon RDC. I did a post-doc there under Chrystel Olivier, entomologist, working on aster yellows and cereal aphids in wheat, barley and oats and looking at the natural enemies that were attacking them.

We created an app, Cereal Aphid Manager, which includes economic thresholds for each crop, the ability to track aphid populations (if they are increasing or not) and natural enemies and how many aphids they can take out of a population in a day (the dynamic action threshold).

We are still collecting data and refining the model, but the app is freely available.

What is the best part about your job?

Well, it’s definitely not the paperwork! I think the best part is when I can actually get out into the field and see the insects in action and watch what they are doing on the plants.

For example, we had some cereal leaf beetles in my wheat crop this year, so I brought them in and put them under the microscope and made a video of the cereal leaf beetle larva feeding. Now I can connect that feeding behavior to those longitudinal feeding scars they leave on the leaves. It’s really, really fascinating to watch.

This and other videos are all available on the Field Heroes YouTube channel or @FieldHeroes on Twitter. If you are into beneficial insects like I am, I would suggest getting in touch with this account. It’s full of fun and great, short bursts of information teaching you about different beneficial insects, like what they do and how many pest insects they can kill in a day.

Tell us a bit about what you’re working on at Saskatoon RDC.

Since my post-doc, I’ve been running multiple projects looking at the effects of aster yellows on different crops. We looked at camelina and wheat, and then I got involved in a flea beetle project looking at the striped and crucifer flea beetle. Through this research, we revisited economic thresholds to see if anything changed based on different parameters in the field. Alejandro Costamagna led this research with entomologists in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta working together on the same issue.

When I first joined AAFC, my mandate was to solve wheat midge, which I thought was already solved with the SM1 gene. As I learned more about it, I realized single gene resistance is not something you want to rely on for the rest of your wheat-growing career, as it can break down quickly. We’ve seen it in canola where diseases have overcome single resistance genes in no time.

Back in 2013 and 2014, there were big outbreaks of wheat midge up in the Peace River region where they had never seen it before, and then it was everywhere. This sparked a project looking at tools used to monitor wheat midge through Jennifer Otani, AAFC and master’s students.

I am currently reviewing data from the third year of the Alternatives to Sm1: hairy glumes, awns and egg antibiosis for managing wheat midge research project. Through this research, we are taking a few different traits that have the potential to reduce wheat midge on the plant, such as hairy glumes, awns and egg antibiosis, and stacking them on top of the SM1 gene to protect it. We have found that some of these traits work together to make the SM1 gene work better. We are not certain if it is one gene or a few genes, but when it is in a plant with SM1, it takes the resistance up to almost 100 per cent, which is very exciting.

What can you say about the value of farmers providing funding and support to your organization?

The value is huge. Thank you very much for all of those check off dollars that go through groups like Manitoba Crop Alliance and other commodity organizations. We have the clusters (five-year projects) for larger projects that you get a lot of people working together, but without the research dollars from farmers themselves, we wouldn’t be able to do these smaller, but important, projects, or even the large, cluster-type projects. Thanks very much for believing in us.

How does that farmer funding and support directly benefit farmers?

We are working on these traits that, hopefully, can reduce the need for insecticides and reduce the effect of insects on your crops. The direct benefit to farmers is increasing yield and decreasing damage and reducing insecticide inputs. That is sort of my goal in doing my research.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

I do plenty of things outside of work! I started playing soccer after about a 20-year hiatus. I don’t play well, but I play in a men’s indoor and outdoor league in Saskatoon. I coach my youngest daughter in soccer and I enjoy riding my bike. I am pretty involved at church as well.

How do you celebrate agriculture?

By wearing my RealAgriculture hat and my #MidgeBusters t-shirt out in the field. I try to transmit the things I’ve learned to the people that need to know them (agronomists, farmers). I also like raising a glass of things that are produced by agriculture, say from a barley or rye crop.

What gets you most excited about your work?

The interaction of insects with the plants and the insects with each other. Finding new forms of resistance and finding new ways to protect plants from insect attacks gets me really interested and excited.

Follow @TylerWist1 on Twitter!

Xiben Wang was raised in China and completed his bachelor’s degree in plant pathology at Nanjing Agricultural University in Nanjing, China. After he finished his undergraduate degree, he moved to Canada to complete his master’s in plant science at McGill University in Montreal, QC. He moved on to earn his PhD at the University of Manitoba (U of M) in the in Department of Plant Science and is now a research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) Morden Research Development Centre (RDC). Xiben lives in Winkler, MB, with his wife and son.

Where did you work before the Morden RDC?

After I earned my PhD, I worked at the Cereal Research Centre in Winnipeg in the area of cereal pathology before coming to work at the Morden RDC.

What got you interested in this area of work?

Both my parents worked in agriculture. I can still remember spending most of my summers in my dad’s lab looking at samples he collected from growers’ fields under the microscope. When I was working on my master’s and PhD, I also had very good mentors who were really hard workers. They encouraged me to study problems that were appearing and to work to fix those. This is what really got me interested in working in agriculture.

Tell us a bit about what you’re working on at the Morden RDC.

My program covers multiple aspects of diseases on small green cereals (wheat, barley and oats). We use different techniques to identify disease pathogens to try to get a better understanding of the species present in farmers’ fields. We work to determine what is the most important pathogen of concern and what damage it may cause.

Another part of my program is working with breeders to try to develop varieties that have increased resistance against Fusarium head blight (FHB) and other major leaf spot diseases found on barley and oats. I operate a disease nursery at Morden RDC for FHB and different barley leaf spot pathogens.

I’m interested to see the impact different management practices can have on soil microbial communities through metagenomics analysis. In the Crop rotation affects disease suppressive soil microbiomes project funded by Manitoba Crop Alliance along with Western Grains Research Foundation and CAP Ag Action, we are looking into whether different crop rotations may promote some groups of bacteria and suppress others.

For example, in a cereal-over-cereal rotation, we see an increase in abundance of the Fusarium pathogen we know will infect the cereals. But in other crop rotations, such trend is not observed. We want to see whether we can identify a certain rotation type that can promote beneficial microbial populations (plant growth promoting bacteria). By doing so, we hope to be able to determine the bacteria most likely present on your farm and what impact it might have (beneficial or negative). If that impact is negative, we’d then look at the recommendations to minimize that.

The long-term goal is to incorporate several sites in different provinces to generate multi-year data sets, so in the long term, we can identify the general trend of what we expect under different crop rotation practices. Hopefully, we can minimize our reliance on commonly used fungicides to control different diseases that are common to barley nodes or wheat.

This project is almost in the second year and we are nearly finished analyzing the data we gathered from the first year. We are expecting to have some preliminary results next year.

What can you say about the value of farmers providing funding and support to your organization?

Our work is directly related to farmers. We try to identify what the most important threat is and look at the possible solutions, as well as what we can do to increase the varieties they grow and minimize the costs they may have to try to combat diseases.

I want to express that the funding from farmers is very important for us to be able to continue the work that we do.

How does that farmer funding and support directly benefit farmers?

There is a direct value to farmers. Take the surveillance work we do, for example. It is very important to gain a better understanding of what major diseases are in fields causing damage, and how it might result in yield loss. When we know what the risks are we can study the best way to control them to minimize yield losses. We study these pathogens so we can develop a strategy to mitigate the losses and try to develop varieties with better resistance, so that farmers will have less risk of loss due to these pathogens. The surveillance work also allows us to monitor the emerging diseases in farmers’ fields and be proactive on potential issues.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

I love to spend time with family and go to sports. Soccer is my favourite sport – I play and I love to watch as well. Go Brazil!

What gets you most excited about your work?

There is always something new for me to study and new techniques to learn. I think that is what gets me most excited. I love to visit farmers’ fields to do surveys. When we find something that we don’t know, I get really excited about the challenge to try to figure out what it is.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve received?

Always look for something new. Don’t jump to conclusions too quickly – study first, verify second and then you’ll get your conclusions.