Farmer-Led Research

We work with farmers, researchers, and institutions across Canada on collaborative research projects both in the field and lab to advance our seed systems. We offer research programs nationally, with dedicated regional programming in British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. While our primary research crop focus is on vegetables and grains, we also support farmer-led seed work for fruits, flowers, cover crops, medicinal plants, and native plants.

The Canadian Organic Vegetable Improvement Program (CANOVI)

CANOVI is a farmer-researcher network across Canada that works to trial and develop open-pollinated vegetable varieties important to Canadian producers and markets. CANOVI has done work with peppers, radicchio, rutabaga, lettuce, carrots, and bok choy. READ MORE.

EVOLUTIONARY WHEAT POPULATIONS

Evolutionary plant breeding relies on natural selection within the farm environment, where farmers save seed from the plants that thrive each year to help populations become resilient and adapted to local conditions. In collaboration with the University of Manitoba, we shared a highly diverse mix of twenty wheat lines for farmers to grow as evolutionary breeding populations on their farms.

Participatory wheat, oat, and potato breeding program

From 2012 to 2021, The Bauta Initiative and the University of Manitoba managed a national participatory plant breeding (PPB) program to develop farmer-bred, climate-resilient wheat, oat, and potato varieties that thrive in organic conditions. The program supported the development of various farmer-bred lines, hosted training and educational opportunities, and developed resources on farmer-led plant breeding and commercializing farmer-bred cultivars. Although this program is finished, the resources, germplasm, and goals of this program still continue. READ MORE.