Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay has announced an investment of up to $6.3 million in funding to the Western Grains Research Foundation.

“Research and innovation are vital to growing and sustaining Canadian crop production," said MacAulay. "Demand for our grains and other field crops continues to grow around the world and the Government of Canada is working hard to help farmers meet that demand, today and for years to come, through strategic investments in science and cutting edge research.”

The money will be used for a five-year Integrated Crop Agronomy Cluster under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (CAP), AgriScience Program.

With an added industry contribution of up to $2.7 million, up to $9.0 million will be directed to agronomy research into multi-crop, integrated crop production that will help keep farmers on the leading edge.

"Producers face many agronomic challenges that cut across multiple crops. The focus of this Cluster is to use an integrated approach to study agronomic issues for everything from soil health, crop rotations, adapting to climate change and dealing with threats such as weeds, insects and disease. The research projects included address many of these agronomic challenges and will aim to find solutions to production threats, as well as further develop sustainable and resilient cropping systems. "

Research completed under this science cluster will focus on resiliency to climate change, improving the sustainability of crops in multi-crop, whole-farm cropping systems, and knowledge and technology transfer.

This is the first AgriScience cluster focused solely on agronomy research.

The announcement was part of MacAulay’s ‘Growing Canadian Agriculture’ tour.