Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and Saskatchewan Agriculture Minister Lyle Stewart have just announced $6.5 million in funding for 38 crop-related research projects.
"The crop research being done in Saskatchewan helps keep Canadian agriculture growing and contributing to a strong economy," says Ritz. "These projects will help improve methods of crop disease control and weather tolerance that will make Saskatchewan farmers more productive and profitable."
"Saskatchewan has a reputation as a leader in crop production and research and these new projects will help to ensure this continues to be the case," Stewart adds. "These projects will help to achieve goals set out in our Growth Plan and help our farmers meet the growing world demand for safe, reliable agriculture products."
Crop-related projects receiving funding in 2013 include:
Improved weed management; Improved yields for wheat; Genetic mapping of blackleg disease in canola; Disease resistance in cereals and pulses; Improvements in the nutritional value of oats; New technologies to assess sprout damage in wheat; Herbicide tolerance in mustard varieties; Addressing genetic and disease obstacles to canary seed production; and Methods to control and eradicate clubroot in canola.
Funding for these projects is provided from the Saskatchewan Agriculture Development Fund (ADF) and is part of a record $20.4 million provincial agriculture research budget in 2012-13, which is an increase of more than 50 per cent since 2007. More than $57 million in research project funding has been provided through ADF since 2007.
This ADF project funding will help to leverage additional third party funding of more than $8.4 million.
Funding for ADF projects is provided under Growing Forward, a federal-provincial-territorial (FPT) initiative. Under Growing Forward 2, FPT governments will continue to support the development of an innovative, competitive and profitable Canadian agriculture and agri-food sector.
A complete list of funded projects is available at www.agriculture.gov.sk.ca/ADF.
