A breeding project that was supposed to bring flax into the 21st century has stalled.
The Flax Council of Canada has stopped funding a multimillion-dollar project to develop a non-genetically modified herbicide tolerant line of flax.
In 2010, the council announced with much fanfare that it had signed an agreement with Cibus Global to develop and commercialize herbicide tolerant flax using Cibus’s patented Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS).
The council had said it would pay Cibus $5.5 million to develop the trait, with up to $4 million of that coming from the federal government.
“It will bring the crop into the 21st century,” said then council president Barry Hall.
Flax is a poor weed competitor and has few herbicide options for weed control. Growers have long desired more competitive varieties, but they don’t want GM flax.
The accidental release of Triffid, a GM flax variety developed by the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre, decimated sales of Canadian flax to Europe when it was discovered in shipments in 2009.
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Cibus’s herbicide tolerant flax was viewed as a non-GM solution that could boost flax yields by 15 to 20 percent.
Hall said the trait would help the industry meet its ambitious acreage and production expansion goals.
“Cibus will make these goals a reality thanks to its non-transgenic RTDS system that will deliver us the high-value traits we need to make flax easier and more profitable to grow while maintaining the level of quality that our customers demand,” he said in a news release announcing the deal.
“We hope it is just the first of many traits we develop together, including oil quality and quantity improvements.”
Cibus estimated the new herbicide tolerant system would come to market in 2015.
That is not going to happen.
“The Cibus project is on hold,” current council president Don Kerr told growers last week at Agri-Trend’s 2014 Farm Forum Event.
He said Cibus was unable to meet certain technical thresholds for the project, which forced the council to pull its funding in June, four years into the venture.
“We were at a point where it was either fish or cut bait. We had to do it,” said Kerr.
He said the program is in the re-evaluation process.
The cash-strapped council had already spent $2.86 million on the project in government and council funding.
“We didn’t see that putting more money towards it at that point was going to be beneficial,” said Kerr.
“We’re still in contact with the company that was working on it. We’re not quite sure what the next step is going to be.”
The project failure will make it harder for the council to achieve its goal to boost national average flax yields to 32 bushels per acre from 24 over the next three years.
The council and the federal government are funding other weed control research projects at universities and Agriculture Canada through the federal AgriInnovation program.
“It’s going to take some time to see the results of it, but it’s definitely in the works,” said Kerr.
