The prickly plant with broad mottled leaves looks more like a weed than a crop bound for export markets.
Milk thistle is tough to produce in Canada’s short growing season, and it’s even tougher to harvest the plant’s brilliant purple flowers, said Doug Waterer of the University of Saskatchewan’s plant sciences department.
“The challenge is to get it up to the concentrations that Europeans want in the short growing season,” he said of the Saskatoon-based plots that experienced freezing temperatures Aug. 20.
The seeds are used overseas as a remedial treatment for those exposed to environmental toxins. Clinical studies have shown its benefits in enhancing liver function in alcoholics.
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Canada is regarded as a pristine site in which to grow crops and well suited to supply herbal markets, said Waterer. However, only a small number of producers are growing milk thistle in Saskatchewan.
Jazeem Wahab, acting manager at the Canada-Saskatchewan Irrigation Diversification Centre in Outlook, agreed.
The centre has conducted field trials on milk thistle for the last five years.
Wahab is now looking for a desiccant that can topkill the plant so growers can combine the two-metre-tall crop in mid to late August.
His experiments with acetic acid have so far been ineffective. Frost could be a natural desiccant but must be followed by good sunny weather to dry the plants.
Wahab called milk thistle a vigorous plant that needs little maintenance and produces numerous flowers, albeit at various times.
“It does not need a lot of looking after,” he said.
It disperses fluff into the air like a weed, but does not spread like one, said Wahab.
Milk thistle grows for six to nine months of the year in milder climates, so the research challenge is to get it to produce over a shorter period of time, he said.
Wahab reports yields of 112-160 kilograms of seed per acre.
Markets are mainly in Europe but are starting to increase in North America. Seed sells for about $22 a kg.
