The curtain began to lift on a new era for Canada's multi-billion crops industry at the 2005 meeting of the Prairie Registration Recommending Committee for Grain (PRRCG) in Winnipeg.

Following years of dramatic changes in agriculture, crop science, intellectual property rights, international protocols and a range of associated issues, the key players in Canada's crop variety registration system responded with updated visions for overhauling the system and setting the stage for a new generation of progress.

Also providing a crystal ball were new crop lines recommended for registration, which promise to fill Prairie fields over the next several years. The PRRCG's four subcommittees - the Wheat, Rye and Triticale Subcommittee, the Barley and Oat Subcommittee, the Pulse and Special Crops Subcommittee and the Oilseeds Subcommittee - all recommended the registration of innovative crop lines with valuable production, market and end-use benefits.

Producers and others can get an overview of all the key changes and recommended crop lines in the new Meristem Land and Science 2005 PRRCG Report: Road Map to the Future. The report was produced by Meristem Information Resources, Ltd., an independent, Calgary-based communications company, and sponsored by Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF), a major research funding organization for farmers in Western Canada.

If all goes as planned, the 2005 PRRCG meeting will be the last for the organization, which has decided to dissolve and shift powers for recommending varieties to its four crop-specific subcommittees, allowing them to become independent recommending committees. In 2005, the subcommittees worked through a range of administrative issues to prepare for that transition, leaving everything in place for implementation in 2006.

"The newly created recommending committees would have the option of using their existing membership in the Western Expert Committee on Grain Breeding (WECG) as a basis to meet in a common forum and conduct business of mutual concern," says Dr. Scott Duguid, PRRCG Chair. "Since there's strong support for retaining this function, the approach we're pursuing is to dissolve the PRRCG but retain the WECG part of the mandate and continue the meeting function under the WECG banner."

In other meeting action, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which for more than five years has conducted a landmark review of the variety registration system, unprecedented in its scale, presented the principles shaping an updated regulatory change proposal expected to be tabled in spring 2005.

Also, Canada's seed sector, which has participated in a major self-assessment over the past two years, presented recommendations from this Seed Sector Review, outlining how its findings will feed into the variety registration change process and an ongoing consultative process.

"Though the PRRCG wields tremendous influence on the crops industry in Western Canada, it has traditionally operated with a low profile in the context of more dramatic industry news and discussions," says Brad Brinkworth, Senior Editor, Meristem Information Resources. "However, this has changed greatly in recent years as the power and importance of crop development has expanded, and as variety registration has become a focal point for discussion and decisions on some of the most pressing issues of the day."

The 2005 PRRCG Report includes complete lists of the crop lines recommended for registration, along with a description of the key traits they include. The report also features highlights of discussion at the meeting, including several articles on major issues affecting crop development, along with background information on PRRCG mandate and processes.

The 2005 PRRCG Report is developed as a service to western Canadian farmers, industry and the broad stakeholders in Canadian crop development. Producers and others can access the full report on the Meristem Land and Science Web site, www.meristem.com, or through the Western Grains Research Foundation Web site, www.westerngrains.com.