Meet a Researcher – Belay Ayele, professor in the Department of Plant Science, University of Manitoba

Belay Ayele grew up in Ethiopia and completed his educational training around the globe. He earned his master’s degree in seed physiology at Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands and his PhD was focused on plant hormone physiology at the University of Alberta. He then moved to RIKEN Plant Science Center in Yokohama, Japan, as a postdoctoral fellow to enhance his background knowledge and training in plant hormones. After Japan, he completed a second postdoctoral training at Iowa State University, before joining the University of Manitoba (U of M) as a professor in the Department of Plant Science.

He currently lives in Winnipeg and enjoys watching sports, including soccer and tennis, in his spare time.

What got you interested in this area of work?

Everything starts from the seed. During my master’s studies, I was curious about seeds – in particular, seed physiology and how that affects the eventual productivity and quality of all crops. If we make the seeds better, can we have better yield? If so, how can we achieve this goal? That is where my curiosity started.

I am interested in plant hormones, plant-produced compounds that control every aspect of crop growth and developmental processes, one way or another.

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

My research here at the U of M funded by Manitoba Crop Alliance and other funding partners is mainly focused on two areas: pre-harvest sprouting (PHS) and lodging in wheat and barley. My research also investigates abiotic stresses in cereal crops.

There are around nine different forms of plant hormones. These compounds are produced in plants at a very small concentration, but they are critical, as they control a wide range of the crop’s growth and developmental processes, as well as its interaction with environment, which ultimately influence yield and quality. We are studying these plant hormones – mainly how to fine-tune their levels in crops by controlling their production and degradation. Fine tuning their levels is pivotal to enhance the productivity of crops and their performance under a variety of stress conditions, such as drought, excess moisture, salinity, heat, etc.

With respect to PHS, our study is focused on two of those plant hormones, as they are major regulators of seed dormancy and germination. They are called gibberellin and abscisic acid. Gibberellin enhances germination and abscisic acid promotes dormancy. The balance between these two hormones is the critical regulator for the seed to germinate/sprout under field conditions after maturity when there is rain or high humidity and cool temperatures.

As for lodging, when severe, it can cause up to 80 per cent yield loss. We are looking at questions like what makes the plant grow excessively/attain excessive plant height? How can we control that excessive growth/plant height? The main factor that controls plant height or stem elongation in plants and consequently causing lodging is gibberellin.

Using this knowledge, we are working on increasing the mechanical strength of the stem and inhibiting the excessive elongation of the internodes, especially the lower internode as lodging usually occurs around the lower internodes.

The main objective of this area of my research is to generate genes or molecular markers that can be used by breeders to facilitate the development of pre-harvest sprouting or lodging-resistant wheat varieties.

In addition to research, I teach crop physiology courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level. I provide research training to students who will become future scientists.

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

This support is critical, as it advances our research and our discovery of solutions. Eventually, the results of our work will be used to mitigate some of the problems farmers are facing and will contribute to saving or maximizing their income. We are addressing problems and finding solutions to enhance the productivity of cereal crops on the farm.

Because of this funding, I can explore new knowledge, make new discoveries and develop new molecular tools or genomic tools that will help mitigate the problems that farmers are facing. At the same time, I train students who become our next generation of scientists and industry leaders in agriculture.

How does that farmer funding and support directly benefit farmers?

Our focus is to generate molecular or genomic tools that will help breeders speed up the development of new varieties that are resistant to pre-harvest sprouting, resistant to lodging or resistant to abiotic stress factors. Our work will have important contributions in providing farmers with more varietal choices.

How do you celebrate agriculture?

We celebrate in the classroom by teaching the students about plant hormones and their role in agriculture. That is part of the celebration for me: trying to share what I learn, what I do in my research and the results I generate from my research program. In addition, my students go and teach ag in the classroom at high schools and junior high schools, and we participate in farm tours and conferences to present our findings.

What are you excited about for the future of agriculture?

I think what is exciting is with the current advances in agricultural technologies like genome sequencing, we have more tools and resources available. Year to year, they are being updated and advanced, helping trim the time it takes to produce tangible results. So, I think the future of breeding and finding genomic and molecular tools will be faster than ever. The availability of advanced technologies and the resources generated by these technologies are exciting.

Pierre Hucl is a wheat breeder at the University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre (CDC). He is also a professor of plant science and the Ministry of Agriculture Strategic Research Program Chair in CWRS Wheat, Specialty Wheats, and Canaryseed Breeding and Genetics.

Hucl began his undergrad in botany but eventually switched to plant science. He completed his master’s at the University of Guelph and worked for a couple of years as a peanut and coloured dry bean breeder there before moving to Saskatchewan to complete his PhD in wheat. Hucl has two daughters, one in Saskatoon and one in Winnipeg, and lives in Saskatoon with his wife.

Where did you work before the CDC?

I worked for the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool for about three-and-a-half years before I joined the CDC in 1990.

What got you interested in this area of work?

I think I’ve always had an interest in genetics without realizing it. I worked for a plant breeder at the University of Guelph for my first summer job in the discipline of crop science. I was working with dry beans and was given the responsibility of planting an international nursery. I was told it was mine and I needed to look after it from planting (by hand), hoeing in the summer, to harvest. Years later, a variety came out of that nursery that became the dominant white bean in Ontario. I saw the evolution from what came out of my original work – that’s kind of what piqued my interest.

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

Plant breeding is a bit like miniature farming. Watching the weather radar, looking for hail, all those kinds of things, and dealing with the consequences of bad weather. My summer is spent in the field pretty well every day.

Then we come indoors in October and start dealing with field data and disease nursery data. I have to make decisions and decide what is going to move into the grain quality testing lab, for CWRS or any other type of wheat. I make decisions every day as the data comes in.

In terms of research projects, I do the statistical analysis to ensure things are working properly. As we finish our grain quality data collection for the breeding program, I decide what will move forward into the registration testing system. I make the decisions on what is going to go to the field at the CDC. In the past, I supervised graduate students. Currently, I sit on a number of graduate student advisory committees and chair a number of departmental administrative committees.

In one of our current projects, funded partially by Manitoba Crop Alliance, we are looking to develop higher-yielding CWRS varieties, while maintaining grain protein levels and baking quality. This project began in 2021 and has been funded for three years. We just completed reporting on the first test site from last year, not a whole lot of data mind you, but it was pretty clean statistically. We increased protein by 0.9 per cent and increased the dough strength, but decreased the yield by three per cent. Now we need to determine if we can pump these genes into some higher-yielding backgrounds and increase yields while keeping a decent quality profile.

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

In this day and age, it’s critical. I am convinced that without check-offs and commission funding, many of the programs in the public sector would have disappeared a long time ago.

I think it’s important for breeders to have contact with the board members and get an idea of what’s important to farmers. It’s even more critical nowadays because in the old days, we used to have a lot of field days and we had a lot of direct contact with farmers. Now, a lot of that contact is made through social media and it’s very easy for people to end up in their own little academic silos.

How does that farmer funding and support directly benefit farmers?

I think the farmers can sway what direction breeding programs head and ensure that they work on problems they are facing on their farms. Whether it’s problems of disease, grading or new technology, for example.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

Before I had my spine fused, I was playing soccer five or six times a week. That was my mind clearing activity. In October last year, I started walking soccer.

What gets you most excited about your work?

To be able to start something from scratch – have the idea, execute it and maybe have it actually work. To me that is exciting; being able to be inquisitive and try different things.

What is your favourite food or favourite meal to cook?

I have lots of favourite foods. I’m big into seafood. I like a lot of things that are chewy like squid, jellyfish, chicken gizzards, all the things that gross out my daughters. But every week I cook a different pulse. That is something I started doing after I had surgery and was stuck at home for a few months.

Elizabeth (Liz) Brauer is a research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa. She earned her bachelor of science and master of science degrees at the University of Guelph (U of G), her PhD at Cornell University and completed her post-doc in Ottawa with AAFC. Brauer lives in Ottawa, ON, with her husband and two sons.

Where did you work before AAFC?

After my master’s, I did a short research position at the International Potato Centre in Lima, Peru. I was there for seven months, and it was a great experience. I also worked at the Boyce Thompson Institute – an NGO focused on plant research located on the Cornell University campus.

What got you interested in this area of work?

My interest in plants really came from my family. My grandmother was raised on a farm in Congress, SK, and my great grandfather bred roses in a greenhouse in Calgary, AB. Both sets of my grandparents had an appreciation for gardening, and I grew up with this appreciation of plants. At our house we grew vegetables in the garden from seed. When I was 16, I took over as the head gardener and I made a lot of mistakes on my quest for really good vegetables.

This laid the groundwork for my interest in plants in general, and then an intro to plant biology course at U of G, taught by John Greenwood at the time, hooked me into the world of plant science and the potential of research as a career. All the things he talked about in that course really explained what I saw in the garden by trial and error. Barry Shelp at the U of G gave me my basic training in research, and I’m very grateful to him for that.

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

Generally, my lab is focused on addressing key agricultural problems in cereal crops. We focus on the physiological and genetic traits of plants and how we can manipulate some of those traits to improve production value. We collaborate with other groups to improve crop performance – breeders, for example, to try to feed into breeding pipelines or if there is a specific trait that can help solve a problem.

While we tend to work more on disease than some of the other traits, we are also involved with phenomics. Phenomics, or high-throughput measurement of plant traits, is a new “big data” approach to try to improve efficiency of monitoring in the field. For example, breeders only have time to visit the field once in the field season to look at a specific trait. Our goal is to implement sensors and cameras to give them information to make the best selections possible. We are currently developing the tools to do phenomics in the field environment on both wheat and barley.

The Targeting mycotoxin resistance to control Fusarium head blight (FHB) project began in 2021 and is supported by Manitoba Crop Alliance (MCA) and Saskatchewan Barley Development Commission. This work is a collaboration between research groups at AAFC and Olds College of Agriculture & Technology in Alberta. This project builds on previous work that we published in 2018 and the discovery of this gramillin, a fungal compound that promotes FHB severity in barley and is toxic to plants, killing cells within hours. We are trying to figure out how it works in the plant and our goal is to develop resistance to the new mycotoxin. This is a new form of resistance that we’re trying to take from the discovery with basic science research and deploy it into the hands of Canadians through genetics.

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

Support from farmers is crucial for our work. It is very important to us that we are serving the community of Canadian farmers because our role, as I see it, is to address their issues using the research tools we have. When I started this position in 2019, I went to farmer forums and I heard directly from them that FHB was a huge problem and that deoxynivalenol (DON) contamination was really important to them in cereal production. Throughout the whole value chain, it is a huge cost for all our taxpayers to have to test for DON constantly. So, farmers need solutions that are practical and easy to use, and I think genetics and new variety development is a really good delivery system for that.

This relationship gives us not just the monetary support, which is important to be able to do the research and bridge the gaps that we need to, but also gives us the motivation to see what we are doing is important to the farmers who are generating the food for Canadians. We are very grateful and happy to be working together with farmers.

How does that farmer funding and support directly benefit farmers?

We have a couple of different goals with this work. We are trying to address both the DON and FHB issues by delivering (over the long term) varieties that are going to be more resistant for farmers. In this particular project, what we’re doing is laying the groundwork for us to be able to find molecular markers in order to feed into breeding pipelines, so we can track that gramillin resistance and bring it into new, elite barley varieties. In the end, we are working to provide farmers with solutions in the form of either genetic or chemical treatment options.

How do you spend your time outside of work?

I enjoy hiking and travelling, and I love long-distance swimming (open water), although I don’t get to do it enough! My longest race was five kilometres, and I did that in under two hours. It feels a lot like research actually – having a goal and you just keep going for it. Don’t give up. It hurts but keep going.

Who or what inspires you?

I get inspiration from a lot of things. My job involves interacting with a lot of different people with very different perspectives. Farmers, industry, people like brewers and maltsters, as well as academics and students from the university. I think the exciting thing is the integration of these different perspectives and seeing where problems converge and where we can really make a difference for a lot of different people.

What is a good piece of advice you’ve received?

This came from Sophien Kamoun at The Sainsbury Laboratory, one of the most influential plant pathologists of our time. He gave a talk at Cornell and had lunch with the graduate students. I remember a number of us were working on this one plant disease that’s great to work with in the lab but not particularly agriculturally relevant. We made a lot of progress in understanding plant-pathogen interactions by studying that disease, but he politely suggested that we should work on a disease that matters. And that really stuck with me because it was true. There are a lot of people who are directly and indirectly affected by plant disease and agriculture. Shifting our emphasis away from model organisms and instead applying our knowledge to agriculture can not only generate really interesting discoveries, but also impact a lot of people.

Follow @liz_brauer on Twitter!

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.