Farmers are one step closer to getting access to wheat varieties specifically tailored for the ethanol and livestock industries.
Following a meeting in Winnipeg last week, it appears there will be virtually no technical or regulatory barriers to developing the kind of wheat those industries want.
“We’re not going to get in the way of this,” said Stephen Fox, a plant scientist with Agriculture Canada and wheat chair for the Prairie Grain Development Committee.
“It’s pretty obvious the feed and ethanol industries are champing at the bit.”
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The meeting brought together about 20 representatives from the ethanol, livestock and grain industries, along with researchers, seed companies, regulators and marketers.
Their goal was to sort out exactly what the new Canada Western General Purpose wheat class, which comes into effect Aug. 1, will look like.
To be registered, new varieties intended for that class will have to meet certain specifications.
Existing wheat classes have a check variety, against which baseline traits such as yield, quality, disease resistance and agronomic performance can be measured when new varieties are put forward for registration.
That’s not the case for the CWGP class, which is what the meeting was designed to address.
“There was pretty good consensus and certainly we’re making progress,” said Fox, adding the process of establishing standards for CWGP is less complicated than for other classes where quality issues such as protein content and test weight can be crucial.
“There will be very little in the way of quality specifications, and not having quality specifications really simplifies this a lot,” he said.
As things stand now, there will likely be no protein or test weight requirement, and both hard and soft varieties will be acceptable.
However, Fox added a survey will be sent to feed manufacturers in Western Canada to see if they have other requirements that need to be addressed.
Agronomic issues should be straightforward, and a short list of candidates to serve as check varieties was put together to assist in that area.
Disease resistance may be the trickiest issue to deal with. On the one hand, the feeling was that there shouldn’t be too many disease criteria right off the bat.
“It’s unreasonable to expect a great disease package on day one,” Fox said.
But at the same time, certain targets are needed to ensure new varieties won’t be dependent on fungicides, for example, or that stem rust susceptibility is allowed into the system.
As for yield, no base line was established, but everyone agreed that the goal is for yields to be as high as possible, given the other specifications that may be set out.
Overall, the idea is to have the class as open as possible, which should enable plant breeders to gain access to a broad range of germplasm and do some “stranger crosses” than is now the case.
A report from the meeting will now go to the PGDC wheat committee for approval. Fox said he’s aware of at least one proposal that will be brought forward for consideration at next month’s annual meeting of the PGDC in Saskatoon.
