Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
May 1, 2015

After an illustrious 41 year career with Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, and building his reputation as one of the world’s premier wheat breeders, Dr. Ron DePauw has joined SeCan in the position of Science Advisor. As an employee of SeCan, DePauw will work with SeCan’s plant breeding partners to accelerate the development and introduction of the best new cereal genetics for Canadian farmers. “We want to be absolutely clear that we are not initiating a new breeding program,” says Jeff Reid, SeCan General Manager. “The real need is to create synergy between Canada’s public and private breeding programs in order to make quicker progress, and we know Ron is the best individual to drive this process.”

DePauw believes the time is right to ramp up private sector involvement through a national consortium of Canadian businesses, prepared to find solutions to ever-shrinking government budgets for plant breeding. “We know it will take partnerships between universities, seed companies, farmers, and government - to keep Canada ahead of the curve when it comes to new varieties,” says DePauw. “SeCan is in a great position to help facilitate these partnerships.”

In 2013 SeCan’s board and membership approved changes directing SeCan to evolve from just distributing varieties, to also playing a role in facilitating their development. “Hiring Ron is a natural evolution given this expanded mandate,” explains Reid.

SeCan is a consortium of over 700 independent Canadian seed businesses engaged in seed production, processing and marketing. As “Canada’s Seed Partner”, SeCan actively seeks partnerships that promote success in Canadian agriculture. SeCan is the largest supplier of certified seed to Canadian farmers, with more than 480 varieties in 27 crop types developed by public and private sector breeding programs.
Collectively, SeCan members are major supporters of seed variety research and development, returning more than $90 million in royalties and research funding since inception in 1976.

Website: http://www.secan.com

Published: May 1, 2015