This article appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of Pulse Crop News.

Jenn Walker and Kevin Zaychuk

The 9th Canadian Pulse Research Workshop was held in Niagara Falls, Ontario, from November 6 to 9, 2012. This biennial conference was organized by Andrew Burt (AAFC), Chris Gillard (Univeristy of Guelph), Alireza Navabi (AAFC), and Tom Smith (University of Guelph). The conference was attended by researchers from across Canada, the UK, and the United States. A wide range of topics were presented both in oral presentations and posters. It is good to see the amount of pulse research in progress and exciting to see that the APG has a hand in funding some of the very progressive projects.

The conference opened with comments from Dr. Bert Vandenberg, a look back at where pulse consumption has come from and where it is now positioned globally and what the road ahead may look like. Murad Al-Katib followed with a very positive outlook for pulses to expand in the food and ingredient markets.

In the days that followed, presentations focused on five key areas:

1. Nutritional value and human health
2. Pulses and environment
3. Genetics and genomics
4. Pulse breeding
5. Pulses in cropping systems

Some of the highlights were the pathology studies, such as Fusarium species from dry bean and pea fields in Manitoba and insensitivity to pyraclostrobin fungicide in mycosphaerella pinodes on the northern great plains. Very few herbicide studies were presented; however, some exciting results have been generated from Eric Johnson, which examined the potential for group 15 herbicides in managing herbicide resistant weeds in pulses. Mario Tenuta presented his findings on stem and bulb nematode, which was responsible for added fumigation on yellow pea shipments to India. The work that was done to show that the nematode is associated with Canada Thistle and not directly with the peas demonstrated that what appears to be very simple and practical research can have a very big impact and can provide cost savings and the reduction of inputs.

There is a significant amount of Canadian research in the areas of nutrition and genomics; however, basic agronomy research was represented in a much lower number of papers and posters. If this is an indication of current direction, it is important that APG continues to recognize agronomic research and the need to be progressive and constantly involved in farming practices that will improve prod