Meet the Board - Ron DePauw
Dr. Ron DePauw is a seasoned character and plant breeder from Saskatchewan, Canada. A grandchild of immigrants from Belgium, DePauw’s family has worked the land for generations.
“The way we were raised as children, we learned to be a contributor to the farm enterprise. We grew up with our own vegetable garden and processing and storing them for winter, so we didn’t go to the store to buy vegetables. I grew up milking cows and feeding chickens and pigs and calves, all the while keeping up the barn and planting and harvesting crops. Before I was even 16 I was driving a truck for hauling grain.”
When asked about his early schooling, DePauw had an unusual answer.
“Well, believe it or not, I attended a one-room country school for grades one to eight with about 20 other students,” DePauw said. For grades 9 to 12, DePauw then had to travel to town every day for school. Unfortunately, the school burnt down prior to starting grade 9. The students were placed to multiple different facilities in town to continue their education. “We were in the upper room overtop of the drugstore for grade 9,” started DePauw, “and for grade 10 we were in a building which had been a church at one time, and then converted to a movie theater and then was used as a school. For grades 11 and 12 a one-room building was moved into town and converted to a one-room school.”
Despite the challenges of grade school, DePauw’s spirit blossomed and he became an autonomous learner. DePauw went on to the University of Manitoba and obtained a B.A from St. Louis University in St. Louis MO. For his master’s degree, again at the University of Manitoba, DePauw studied genetics. “By the time I finished my master’s degree, I had completed a very large portion of the graduate school Plant Science courses, I already had a number of the course requirements for my Ph.D.,” DePauw said. He was invited to join the University of Manitoba’s wheat genetic enhancement team to work at the Njoro Research Station, Kenya.
“I have held for a very long time that there should be food for all. And I believe that people are people. What is the desire of a parent for their children? What is the desire of a husband for his wife or for his daughter? And for me, I learned people are people - they want to have basic freedoms! And that there might be freedom from fear, freedom of speech, and freedom of food. That's where I come from. I see where people are in the world. They should have access.” – Dr. Ron DePauw
DePauw was introduced to international agriculture while studying at the University of Manitoba in 1970. “The government of Kenya at the time wanted some help from Canada to become more self-sufficient, starting with their wheat production.” said DePauw, “The project was between the Canadian government and Kenyan government, and the University of Manitoba was delivering on that contract. There were various researchers from Canada that were working at the Noro Research Station, now called the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization. And so, in 1970, I had the opportunity to go to Kenya.”
However, his work in Kenya did not come without its own set of challenges
“When I was there in 1970 to 1972, I was on a multidisciplinary team of local Kenyan scientists, and renowned Canadian scientists working in this area. “ DePauw said, “We had to solve the problems. There was a lot of strategic planning that we had to do and then communicate with others that we thought would have had answers.
The team was faced with a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Stem rust, yellow rust, and leaf rust were causing enormous wheat yield losses. The pathologists established relevant differentials to characterize the virulence in the rusts, especially to identify the wheat genes the rusts could overcome. Together with the breeders, new sources of resistance to the rusts were discovered. A breeding strategy to incorporate resistance to the three rusts was designed and implemented and resulted in resistant varieties being released. The agronomists formulated fertilizer rates and discovered micro-nutrient deficiencies such as copper. The cereal chemist established protocols to select for protein quality and protein quantity.
In his plant breeding career, DePauw has spent years working delivering field ready wheat varieties for farmers in his home country of Canada. His career highlights include shifting the negative relationship of grain yield and grain protein content, developing semi-dwarf varieties with much improved Fusarium head blight resistance, stacking multiple genes for resistance to each of stem rust, leaf rust, and yellow rust, and building in genetic resistance to wheat stem sawfly and orange blossom wheat midge insect pests.
Here is a rundown of some of DePauw’s varieties which have dominated the Canadian wheat acreage for the past 20 some years:
‘AC Barrie’: Released in the mid1990s, became a dominant variety because of its higher grain yield and protein content, improved Fusarium head blight resistance and leaf and stem rust resistance.
‘Carberry’: Released in 2009, was a semi-dwarf variety that had both high grain yield and protein content with very robust disease resistance including Fusarium head blight.
‘AAC Brandon’: Released in 2012. DePauw stated this variety, “blew the doors off everyone’s expectations”. Within two years of its commercial launch, it was the most widely grown wheat variety in Canada. AAC Brandon has very broad adaptation, robust disease resistance, and high grain yield without any loss of protein content.
As a board member of the Borlaug Training Foundation, Ron DePauw has a deep-rooted passion for science and understanding of the importance of education.
“I think that education is foundational for personal, community and social development,” said DePauw, “I have held for a very long time that there should be “food for all”. And I believe that people are people. A profound experience I had when I was in Kenya. What is the desire of a parent for their children? What is the desire of a husband for his wife or for his daughter? And for me, I learned people are people - they want to have basic freedoms! There should be freedom from fear, freedom of speech, and freedom of food. That's where I come from. I see where people are in the world. Wherever people are in the world, they should have access to resources, the tools to be able to grow their own crops. You need to have security for yourself. The same thing in Africa, and South America, people are put on the road because they don't have security? There have to be some of these basic freedoms including from oppression. We have to find a way for these people in various areas to be brought into the economic sphere so that they've got a way to earn their own living. We can continue to deliver food to struggling areas, but I don't think that's what people want. They want to be brought into the economic sphere by agriculture first.”
By Linc Thomas