Keith Briggs has retired from the University of Alberta as cereal breeder and agronomist after 30 years of an academic career in teaching, research, technology transfer and international work. His career includes 7 years of chairing the Department of Plant Science, and three years as the first chair of the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science (AFNS). AFNS was formed from merging Plant Science, Animal Science, and Foods and Nutrition, and has a mandate for dealing with agri-food systems including food influences on health, in a 'Food for Health' system-wide approach.
Keith's first degree was in genetics at Cambridge University, England, followed by an Agricultural Diploma and time spent at PBI, Cambridge, after which he completed his PhD in wheat breeding at the University of Manitoba. He was hired as the barley breeder at Edmonton in 1969, and started a malt barley breeding program. With the advent of Dr. Jim Helm's full time breeding program with the Alberta Government (Alberta Agriculture Food and Rural Development), started at the University, Keith later merged his materials into the new Alberta program, and switched to wheat breeding for northern conditions. Samson, the first semi-dwarf barley released in Canada, was an outcome of his earlier work, from a cross made in Keith's program and later transferred to Jim's program as an F3, subsequently selected as a new variety. Windsor feed barley, arising from earlier University of Alberta breeding work, was also registered by Keith, and was the first scald resistant barley released for Alberta. Keith also headed the Kenya Government barley program at Njoro, kenya, during his 2.5 year secondment to that program on a CIDA / University of Manitoba project.
The University of Alberta, Edmonton, site is an ideal location for barley evaluation and research, and Keith has made his program available for many collaborative studies with barley over the years. This has included registration and cultivar evaluation trials, the NABGMP program, a collaborative NSERC funded QTL evaluation research project headed by Dr. Mather (McGill), scald evaluation for Alberta and Saskatchewan breeding programs on a routine basis (up to 8,000 lines per year), and barley trait studies of his own research program. The latter have included studies of inter-plant competition effects on selection, straw strength studies, and laboratory and field tests to predict field germination vigor of barley cultivars. On the wheat side he is the breeder of Cutler Canada Prairie Spring wheat (the earliest registered variety in Canada), Glenlea and Laser (Canada Extra Strong wheat), and Alikat (acid soil tolerant) (Canada Western Red Spring wheat).
Keith has taught crops and plant breeding courses, supervised over 17 graduate students in cereal research, has been involved in development projects in China, Kenya, Thailand, Tanzania, Zambia, and Outer Mongolia, and has published over 75 refereed journal articles. He continues as Chairman of the Alberta Cereal and Oilseeds Advisory Committee, and as Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta.
Keith has 'definitely not left the world of work !' and is currently seeking continuing career opportunity in the international agricultural area.. He also has started a small consulting company, GrainTek, that is available for short term or long term work in the breeding / agronomy area.
He can be contacted at:
GrainTek
10903 - 35 Avenue, Edmonton Alberta Canada T6J 2V2
Ph/FAX 780-434-4472 E-Mail: kbriggs@afns.ualberta.ca
Professor Emeritus, Cereal breeding and agronomy
Dept. of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science
University of Alberta, Edmonton Alberta, Canada T6G 2P5
Ph 780-492-0171, FAX 780-492-4265