2025 in Review:
Building Stronger Connections Between Seed Science, Systems and the Field.
In 2025, 20/20 Seed Labs continued to evolve alongside the needs of Canada’s seed industry, strengthening how diagnostics, data, and expertise come together to support confident decision-making from seed to stand.
Throughout the year, our focus has remained clear: investing in the right people, the right systems, and the infrastructure needed to improve efficiency, enhance insight, and ensure customers can act on their results with confidence.
Continuous education remained a cornerstone of our work in 2025. Through consistent contributions to the 20/20 Learning Centre, newsletters, and industry communications, our team has shared practical, grower-focused insights on topics such as germination versus vigour, mechanical damage, disease diagnostics, and emerging trends including wheat midge tolerance and herbicide resistance. These resources were designed not simply to explain tests, but to help our networks understand what results mean, and how they translate into real-world decisions.
We also remained focused on strengthening the connection between laboratory results and on-farm performance. As seed testing continues to move beyond pass/fail outcomes, our work has centered on helping customers better interpret risk, identify challenges earlier, and use diagnostics to guide management decisions.
The launch of Alive, our online mobile results notification system that works alongside all customer accounts, marked a significant step forward in how customers access and manage their results. Guided by customer feedback, improvements were made throughout the year to enhance efficiency, usability, and integration with online accounts. We are grateful to everyone who contributed feedback and look forward to the continued evolution of Alive.
Our collaboration with SeedTrakr continued to streamline data flow by efficiently moving laboratory results into client platforms, with additional work underway to enable direct sample submission from SeedTrakr. Through in-field events, speaking engagements and ongoing involvement in field trials, our team continued to connect laboratory insight with the realities of harvest and stand establishment. A particularly impactful collaboration with Bushel Plus has helped growers translate what happens in the combine into measurable effects on seed quality in the lab. By combining harvest focused expertise with a diagnostic perspective, we are able to see how mechanical damage can significantly reduce germination and vigour later in the season. This kind of real-world link between field practices and seed performance highlights the benefit of pairing lab data with on farm observations to drive better decisions from harvest through stand establishment.
Through our collaborative Industry Resources initiative, we aim to bring a network of vetted tools and leading industry events to our networks contributing to continued learning and overall growth.
At the Nisku laboratory, a complete rework of the germination area was completed in preparation for anticipated changes stemming from the review of Chapter 4 of the M&P germination methods. These improvements have already resulted in increased efficiency and enhanced our ability to deliver timely results.
To support this growth, the Nisku team expanded with the addition of two fully qualified Seed Analysts, while the Winnipeg laboratory welcomed a Germination Analyst, strengthening capacity and expertise across both locations.
In Winnipeg, the laboratory also acquired an additional unit in 2025, with renovations completed by year-end. The refreshed space supports expanded services today while positioning the lab for future growth.
Early in 2025, we launched the Potato Testing Program with CFIA accreditation, including RT-PCR testing for Potato Viruses S, X, Y, A, and PLRV; ELISA and IMF testing for Bacterial Ring Rot (BRR); and ELISA testing for Potato Viruses S, X, Y, A, M, PotLV, and PLRV. We remain committed to expanding this program and are actively working toward accreditation for additional, emerging potato viruses.
Our leadership team also provided input toward the preparation and organization of an upcoming ISTA Workshop and AGM planned for June 2026. Alongside this, 20/20 Seed Labs continues to take an active role in CFIA-led committees related to Chapter Four, remaining deeply connected to Canadian production systems and regulatory frameworks.
Joel Wenaus and our Licensed Crop Inspection team continue to prioritize continuous development and education across diverse crops in Western Canada. Holding LSCI licenses across Groups 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6, the team supports everything from cereals to specialized crops such as hybrid rye and industrial hemp and remains recognized as the most qualified and experienced independent inspection teams in Canada.
The launch of the LabLink Podcast has become another important extension of our work, creating space for deeper conversations with industry experts, analysts, and partners, and helping bring the voice of the lab closer to the field when it matters most, we are looking forward to building on this in the new year to meet you where you’re at with the insight you need to grow stronger year over year.
Together with MAG, a premium agronomy firm owned by Matt Gosling, we conducted field trials using commercial-scale wheat and pea seed sourced directly from client lots that had undergone laboratory testing. With two trial sites in Alberta, the project has provided us with valuable insight from both a research and practical perspective, particularly in evaluating the performance of emerging biological products alongside conventional seed treatments. Building on the strength of these early results, and with additional data forthcoming, we plan to continue and expand this project over the next two years to further strengthen the dataset and deepen the insights generated. In 2026, our work will expand further into a focused mechanical damage study in peas.
As we step into 2026, we remain focused on expanding knowledge sharing to further bridge the gap between laboratory diagnostics and field-level decision-making. Through ongoing education, collaboration, and open conversation, our labs are committed to translating data into practical insight supporting earlier questions, clearer decisions, and better outcomes.
You can follow along with our journey through our community networks on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube.
We’re on a mission to #neverstopgrowing!
