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Plant biologist Marcus Samuel has been working for more than a decade to improve the climate resilience of crops.
"It is definitely the Holy Grail. I think this has been one of the hardest things to crack," Samuel said. Santosh Kumar, a wheat breeder working on drought resistance for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Brandon, Man., said he sometimes feels like he is racing against time."If we don't grow enough wheat, there will be food shortages."
Gains have been made — the wheat Canadian farmers plant today is tougher and hardier than the wheat of 100 years ago. But the process remains painstakingly slow, requiring years of field trials. One reason why science has yet to crack the problem is the sheer complexity of the wheat plant itself. The wheat genome is huge, containing five times more DNA than the human genome. Hunting for better wheat traits is infinitely more difficult than working with a crop that has a simpler genetic profile.International scientists finally fully mapped the wheat genome in 2018, a breakthrough that has led to recent advancements using genetic research.
In 2021, the Canadian government relaxed its rules around gene-edited crops, saying seeds that have been produced using the technology are safe and do not require special assessments by Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
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