GLENLEA, Man. – Organic researchers practise what promoters preach: they use extremely low inputs.
Unfortunately, that also applies to putting little money into research, which is needed for better crop varieties.
“We haven’t had anyone banging the doors down to do organic wheat breeding,” said Agriculture Canada wheat breeder Stephen Fox, who is trying to develop lines of wheat specifically for organics.
Oat researcher Jennifer Mitchell Fetch is grappling with the same problem: organic growers could benefit from crop lines that are specifically designed to survive without chemical fertilizer and pest control, but there’s almost no funding to support variety development.
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So she and other researchers use conventional varieties and grow them organically choosing the best-looking kernels after each season.
“We hope by doing that we’re getting the best, most robust plants for the next generation, which will be the best competitors against the weeds,” said Mitchell Fetch.
Fox said he conducted years of organic tests by piggybacking research on his conventional research.
“I produce lots of F2 (second generation) seed every year, so I use what I need for the conventional program and then I take the extra across the road and start working over here,” said Fox on a recent field day at the organic plots at the University of Manitoba’s Glenlea research farm.
“I’m not introducing a lot of extra costs for my breeding program, other than one or two days with our fancy seeder and a little labour.”
Since organic production makes up a small portion of the overall crops grown in Western Canada, agencies such as the Western Grains Research Foundation are reluctant to earmark too much money to organic variety development, Fox said.
But the lack of industry support means research must be done on the cheap so crucial elements are sometimes left out, such as test results at the end of studies.
Fox said new funding from the Agricultural Research and Development Initiative, which parcels out research money from the federal and provincial governments, will allow him to expand his efforts.
“We’ll be able to start doing a better job of wheat quality testing,” he said.
“Up to now we’ve basically just been doing protein testing because that was all we could afford to do.”
Apart from testing a wider array of quality characteristics, the new funding will allow late generation breeder seed to be grown in New Zealand during winter, which should speed new variety development.
Mitchell Fetch said her organic oat breeding efforts are at the F5 stage, so results should be available in a few years.
University of Manitoba researcher Martin Entz said organic cropping systems are vital for Western Canada, but hard to develop because few producers use them. Without money, new varieties won’t be developed and that will keep people away from organic farming.
“Wheat and canola get all the research funding, and confined animal production. Farmers trying to integrate don’t have access to most of these resources.”
