BANFF, Alta. – A grain industry group that assesses the quality of proposed new wheat varieties wants to inject more objectivity and consistency into the process.
The committee introduced the new guidelines at last week’s annual meeting of the Prairie Grain Development Committee.
Graham Worden, chair of the wheat quality evaluation team, said the idea is make the system fairer for plant breeders and in terms of selecting new products.
“We want to make our deliberations as consistent as possible,” said Worden, who is also senior manager of technical services for the Canadian Wheat Board.
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“The idea over the next couple of years will be to have more reliance on objective, measurable criteria than is now the case.”
He said that with the committee often looking at 20 to 30 varieties, there were concerns the standards might shift as the meeting progressed.
Two years ago the committee set up a special working group to devise more objective criteria, and that system is now being used.
The new system won’t be totally based on objective measures, however.
Worden said there will always be a role for industry experts, such as breeders, grain handlers, millers, bakers and marketers, to use their expertise and experience to make subjective judgments about new lines, especially when it comes to market acceptance.
The new system will use scientific tests to compare new lines against existing check varieties in areas such as falling number, starch, protein, milling yield and flour ash.
Depending on how the new variety fares in each of those areas, it will be slotted into one of five categories: improvement, significant improvement, neutral, some concern or serious concern.
Ron DePauw, a wheat breeder from the Agriculture Canada research centre in Swift Current, Sask., said the important thing for breeders is that there be a clear set of quality guidelines and criteria and that they be applied consistently to assess new varieties.
Those guidelines should include scientific standards based on laboratory tests but must also take market acceptance into account.
He added it’s also crucial that if the industry decides to change the quality standards, that information be passed on to plant breeders as soon as possible.
Lines that are now in their third year of testing were likely started 10 years ago, based on information about market requirements available to breeders at that time.
“So if the committee says, ‘this is the new target in three or five years,’ the breeders may be in the middle of developing other lines based on the old targets,” he said.
More than $1 million has been invested in a line’s development by the time it gets into its third year of testing, which means getting information to breeders as quickly as possible will ensure research funding is spent efficiently.
Norm Woodbeck of the Canadian Grain Commission said the new system will provide the quality evaluation team with an immediate indication of new lines that are definitely in or out and allow more time to evaluate those on the borderline.
