Genetic Enhancement and Food Safety and Quality Section

Dr. Judith Frégeau-Reid
Section Head

The Genetic Enhancement and Food Safety and Quality Section of ECORC develops improved germplasm as well as inbred lines of corn, new varieties of soybeans, winter and spring wheats, barley, and oats for eastern Canada, with disease and insect resistance, improved quality, early maturity and cold tolerance.

The Genetic Enhancement and Food Safety and Quality Section consists of six commodity based studies that focus on breeding high yielding, disease resistant crop varieties for Eastern Canada, plus two studies in related discipline areas.

Barley Breeding: Focuses on feed grain cultivars, including six- and two-row and hulled and hulless types; and on genomic mapping of important traits.

Corn Improvement: Produces inbred lines with excellent combining ability, early maturity, cold tolerance, insect, disease and other pest tolerance; utilizes transformation technology for disease and stress tolerance.

Crop Pathology: Focusses on the identification and control of cereal and soybean diseases, and the development of management strategies for plant, soil and seed-borne pathogens of field crops.

Grain Quality: Relates seed structure and composition to end-use functionality; studies genetic and environmental effects on quality; identifies and characterizes mycotoxins produced by Fusarium species and other fungi; and develops selection techniques for the breeding programs.

Oat Breeding: Develops hulled and hulless varieties with improved milling and feed quality traits and disease resistance; applies molecular marker assisted selection techniques for quality and disease resistance.

Soybean Improvement: Develops by conventional breeding and genetic transformation technology, cultivars with short season adaptation, higher seed protein and improved end-use traits; explores physiological limitations to yield, adaptation and quality.

Spring Wheat Breeding: Identifies spring wheat with stable yield, Fusarium Head Blight resistance and acceptable milling and bread quality.

Winter Wheat Breeding: Develops soft textured pastry and hard red milling winter wheat with Fusarium Head Blight resistance and improved winter survival.

Resources

Experimental Fields

The 425 ha of experimental fields at the Central Experimental Farm provide land in close proximity to facilities for evaluation of plant material.

Structural Analysis Unit

The structural analysis equipment includes transmission and environmental scanning electron microscopes, a light microscope and imaging system, a microspectrophotometer, as well as high field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Mass Spectroscopy.