Benefits to Canada
The Green Crop Network is expected to produce many new varieties of Canadian crops with traits specific to increased C sequestration, reduced need for N fertilizer inputs, enhanced stress tolerance, lower N2O emissions and improved capacity for seed oil synthesis. Each of these altered crops offers an immediate and obvious advantage for producers, who will be able to benefit from improved diversity in crop production, and through the added value of growing crops with offset potential. Canadian farmers have laboured under the burden of foreign agricultural subsidies; new crops with specific and desirable traits will place producers in a better position for world market competition. In particular, the production of biofuel crops will not only assist producers by providing a new market opportunity, but the resulting commodity, biofuel, will reposition agriculture from a net energy consumer, to a potential net energy producer. As fossil fuel reserves continue to decline, and their consumption may become a target for added taxation, biofuel value will climb.
The Green Crop Network is expected to provide much needed tools for long term mitigation of climate change, and for continued production of necessary food, feed, fibre and fuels in increasingly difficult climatic conditions.
The Green Crop Network is expected to train the highly qualified people who will position Canada as a global leader in scientific insights and technologies related to biosphere mitigation of climate change. Specifically, Canada will become the global source for crop germplasm containing traits specific to altered C and N metabolism, and for the understanding of how genes control these processes, and may be manipulated to enhance C sequestration in biomass and soils and reduce N2O emissions to the atmosphere.
