Canada’s wheat grading system, which for decades has been heavily dependent on kernel visual distinguishability, could soon become more accepting of non-registered industrial wheat varieties for feed and ethanol with a new device being developed by an Ontario company.
NeoVentures Biotechnology Inc. of London is expected to soon file for a patent on a process for identifying wheat varieties. If the system proves itself, it could speed development of new markets for industrial grain.
“There are still significant technical hurdles, but if we are able to constrain them, then going to market with it would be very rapid,” said Gregory Penner, president and chief executive officer of NeoVentures.
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“We need to be convinced yet that this is really going to work.”
The technology, which uses a fluorimeter to detect specific wavelengths of fluorescence from markers applied to seeds, could be put to work at grain elevators within 18 months, he said, using off-the-shelf equipment.
“You can get a hand-held fluorimeter for about $2,000,” he said. “It’s not all that different from NIR (near-infrared). All the grain elevators have NIR machines for measuring protein and oil content in grain samples.”
The part that is top secret, said Penner, is the way NeoVentures has figured out how to use the device to identify grain varieties.
“We’re using something that we could apply to the grains, measure it and then tell them apart.”
Penner said unlike other time consuming methods, many of which involve grinding kernels, a 500 gram sample could be tested intact in less than five minutes.
“It would enable the development of industrial crops and identity preservation. We could do streaming at the elevator of industrial and food crops.”
So far the company’s researchers have been able to use the technology to differentiate wheat varieties from different classes. He’s hoping for a breakthrough by the end of the summer.
“Our next goal is to be able to use it to differentiate between varieties within CWRS (Canada Western Red Spring). That’s probably the toughest class to do it within,” he said. “If we can do that, then I’m pretty confident that this whole thing will work.”
The company, which has been working on the concept for more than a year, has been working with the Canadian Wheat Board with research funding from the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council since last August in an effort to prove the technology works.
If it lives up to expectations, it would enable the registration of feed and industrial wheat varieties that are presently limited by KVD restrictions.
For decades, grain inspectors have relied on their eyes to determine the grade and variety of samples taken from loads of wheat that farmers brought to the local elevator.
Because the visual difference between wheat kernels of registered and unregistered varieties is often indistinguishable, the sale of unregistered wheat types is forbidden under the Seeds Act so as to safeguard the purity of the registered varieties designed for human food.
Plant breeders complain that this restriction handicaps the development of new wheat varieties bred for feed, ethanol and other industrial uses that might offer significant and lucrative benefits to farmers.
Earl Geddes, vice-president of market development and market support for the CWB, said the NeoVentures technology “is the closest thing to a driveway test that anybody is working on.”
While KVD would continue to be part of the CWB’s quality assurance system, he said the new technology could operate in parallel with it.
“If you’re an ethanol producer and you want specific varieties, and you can identify a variety on the driveway, then you can get them,” said Geddes.
“Otherwise, I don’t know how they’re going to tell what they are getting because there are no visual distinguishing characteristics for the new Canada Western General Purpose Wheat class.”
The new CWGP wheat class will be effective Aug. 1 this year, according to the Canadian Grains Commission website. Varieties within the class will be allowed to visually resemble each other.
General purpose wheat varieties make up 10 percent of the CWB’s marketing efforts, with 70 percent CWRS and 20 percent Canada Western Amber Durum.
“Should it be successful, this device has the potential to help us move forward in variety identification that would accommodate almost every part of our wheat industry and other crops as well,” Geddes said.
Another MRAC-funded project, in which the grain commission is working with DNA Landmarks Inc. of Quebec, is developing a lab-based DNA marker analysis method of identifying grain.
Christiane Menard, a research manager at DNA Landmarks, said the company is identifying and compiling a database of DNA profiles for registered wheat lines from Western Canada.
“We’ll be able to tell which variety it is or if it has been contaminated with another,” Menard said. “And we’ll be able to tell you which line it has been contaminated with.”
The system, to be tested this summer, identifies a variety by looking for repeated DNA marker sequences in the genome and can give test results within 72 hours. It will be ready for general use within 30 to 45 days, she said, with extensive testing to be done this summer.
Geddes said the CGC’s project and the CWB’s driveway-based technology would likely be complementary.
“One may be an early screening tool; the other one may be the tool that does unit car trains.”
