Michael Dossett knows all too well that when extreme weather descends on B.C., it can be devastating for berry growers.
Whether it’s a frigid cold snap, a drenching atmospheric river, a searing heat wave or a parching drought, even a short stretch of unusual weather can—and does—wipe out swaths of strawberry, raspberry and blueberry crops.
“We talk about a 30-year average, but there is no average anymore,” says Dossett. “It’s just the average between extremes.”
But for Dossett—a berry breeder and geneticist tasked with developing the most reliable and resilient plants for the conditions—extreme weather events also present an opportunity. Every year he develops 15,000 berry plant strains, each one genetically unique, and determines which are the most likely to thrive in a changing climate—and when those weather extremes arrive, it’s sink or swim.
“It’s a way of putting selection pressure on the plants and saying, ‘I had these under consideration and some of them failed because of the weather extreme and some of them didn’t,’” explains Dossett, who painstakingly monitors the seedlings as they audition for the next phase of competition. “So now we know which ones we’re going to drop and what we’re going to move forward with.”
The plants that make the cut are then replicated and grown in small plots for several years; of those, the best performers are given to farmers in small batches for growing trials. Eventually, the fittest hit the market.
Still, there’s a heck of a hitch: the trials for strawberries take eight to 10 years on average, and roughly 15 years for raspberries and blueberries—and that’s if everything goes according to plan. (Occasionally a particularly stellar strain gets the equivalent of a talent show “golden buzzer” and is fast tracked, but will still take years.)
What’s more, the berry plants not only need to be tough enough to withstand an unpredictable climate, the fruits must also have just the right firmness and taste, and have the longest possible shelf life, to satisfy finicky consumers with myriad options.
But while Dossett can’t speed up the process to match the rapid march of climate change, he uses today’s extremes to hedge his bets. “When I make a cross, I’m really thinking, ‘What are growers going to need 20 years from now?’” says Dossett, who works with the BC Blueberry Council, the Raspberry Industry Development Council and the BC Strawberry Growers Association. “Because the reality is, by the time the growers plant it and start seeing fruit, we’re looking 20 years into the future.”
Climate swings have hit berry crops hard. According to one United Nations report, the 2021 heat dome damaged roughly 75 percent of British Columbia raspberry crops, and 10 to 30 percent of blueberry crops. In 2023, after an unusually warm, dry spring, blueberry farmers saw their smallest crop in over a decade. Given that B.C.’s berry business represents hundreds of millions of dollars annually, the losses for farmers can be disastrous.
Lauren Erland, assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in berry horticulture at the University of the Fraser Valley, wasn’t in the region during the 2021 heat dome, but has spoken with berry growers who described walking through fields of jam.
She says when it comes to climate change, there isn’t one particular challenge such as heat, cold or drought that’s imperilling berry crops; rather, it’s the unpredictability that makes it harder for growers to manage.
Because traditional breeding programs take so long, Erland is trying a different approach: take cranberry varieties that already exist and stress them to determine which are most likely to withstand climate change. The research involves putting plants under small, open-topped plexiglass structures that warm them up by roughly two degrees to emulate future temperature rise while still exposing them to today’s wild weather swings.
“It’s a really accessible, hands-on way of evaluating these different varieties that are going to have to perform under climates 50 years from today,” says Erland, adding that a cranberry plant can often produce for 75 years, so it’s not a crop that is turned over quickly.
“In some varieties, we’ve got 70 percent losses in yield with the warming—but we have others where you can’t even tell the dome was there,” she says. “If you pick up the chamber, the plant looks exactly the same as everything around it. So we definitely have options coming up from this.”
One of the biggest barriers facing farmers looking to replant is cost, and last fall the B.C. government announced a second round of the Enhanced Replant Program, which funds farmers looking to try more climate-resilient, high-value fruit varieties. The first round saw over 2,000 acres of B.C. perennials replaced, including roughly 733 acres of berry crops.
Replanting is part of the natural cycle of farming, says Lana Popham, B.C.’s minister of agriculture and food, but growers are struggling to keep up with the pace of climate change and the ensuing extreme weather events.
“Farming isn’t going to get any easier over the next few years, whether it’s drought, whether it’s flooding—you name it,” says Popham. “We’re battling on the front lines of agriculture, but we are also working with farmers to try to find the best way through it.”
Back in the Fraser Valley, Dossett says ongoing investments and emerging tech will be essential for farmers and berry breeders facing climate change. High-throughput phenotyping—which uses sensors and imaging tech to automatically measure plant traits and performance—is among the technologies beginning to take hold, he says, and will change the game over time as costs come down.
Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, agrees. Sensor technology paired with precision irrigation, and targeted genetics using CRISPR breeding—a method of developing new plant varieties by making small, precise changes to a plant’s DNA—are showing great promise. Newman also points to companies like Heritable Agriculture, founded by former Google researcher Brad Zamft, that are using AI and large biological datasets to predict how different plant breeds will respond to climate stresses.
“[Zamft] realized you could build a virtual farm and have the AI develop your new crop, and then you can make the CRISPR changes in the DNA to match that. So instead of a 10-year cycle of crop development, maybe you can do it in two or three, which is a big breakthrough,” says Newman. “I think we’re going to hear a lot about that, and there are a lot of Canadian investors going into Heritable Agriculture.”
Still, Newman warns that technology on its own likely won’t be enough. To that end, she is calling on leaders to create a national, unified approach when it comes to agricultural technology adoption, food security and food sovereignty—and at the same time to address the elephant in the room.
“We’re not miracle workers. We’re working as hard as we can to stay ahead of these changes. But at the end of the day, we really need climate change to stop,” she says. “If we just, unchecked, continue to drive average temperature up and drive up extreme weather, no, we can’t build an agriculture industry that survives that. And that’s a real challenge.”
