The late spring has growers thumbing through the seed guide looking for shorter season varieties and calling seed growers to see if there is still seed available for early maturing crops.
For growers looking for a short season canola, Bob Mastin of Mastin Seeds near Sundre, Alta., said Polish canola might be a good option.
Mastin sells two of the latest Polish canola synthetic hybrids that reach maturity in 85 to 90 days, on average.
“My five-year average through crop insurance, which is the gold standard and no b.s., is about 35 bushels per acre. So, I’ve had over 40, then on some problem years I’ve had in the 20s,” Maston said.
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“Thirty-five compared to 55 or 60 of Argentine isn’t really that attractive, but if Argentine is a zero option and it’s a choice between zero and 35, 35 beats the hell out of zero.”
Angela Brackenreed, an agronomist specialist at the Canola Council of Canada, said improvements have been made in the Polish canola breeding program, and the crop could be used as an insurance policy on some acres, although maybe not across the entire farm.
“With that Polish canola, the yield potential certainly is not at the point of our brassica napus … Argentine canola, and some of the disease packages are lacking as well,” Brackenreed said.
“You want to know that you have no major diseases issues, like major blackleg issues, and that you have no major weed control issues that will hinder the progress of a Polish variety.”
She said a major hurdle when growing Polish canola is that it doesn’t have herbicide tolerance, and growers are confined to pre-seeding and Group 2 chemistries.
“If you have kochia, cleavers or thistle issues, then weed control could be a major hurdle with these varieties,” Brackenreed said.
She said there are also short season napus varieties that have similar days to maturity as Polish canola, and the napus varieties have better disease packages, yield potential and herbicide options.
Ashton Trawin of Trawin Seeds in Melfort, Sask., grows and sells AC Synergy, which is a non-genetically modified Polish variety that offers a 15 to 20 percent yield bump over Sunbeam and ACS-C7, the two more generic Polish varieties from 20 years ago.
“As for maturity, it’s about 87 days, but the days will shorten as you plant it later,” he said.
“It seems like it will mature in 83 or 85 days compared to 87 if you sow it mid-May. As for yield, (it) will be about mid 30s if you sow it mid-May, so 35, 36, 37 bushels an acre. As you progress to mid-June, the yield drops and you’d probably be more like 30 bu. by June 10.”
He said growers should match their fertility package with their seeding dates.
“If you’re sowing it late, then the idea would be you would drop your fertility of nitrogen down to match that,” Trawin said. “With only a 25 to 30 bushel per acre crop, you’re probably only going to need 60 or 70 pounds of N, and the rest would just be a waste and lost to volatilization or leaching.”
A problem with late-seeded canola is there is a greater chance of aborted flowers due to hot weather.
“If it’s 26 C or about, you start getting aborted flowers, and typically if you’re seeding it later, your flowering is going to be directly in the middle of the hottest part of summer,” Trawin said.
Limited herbicide options means it’s not a good idea to grow a Polish canola on a dirty field.
Trawin uses Edge as a pre-seed, Assure or Post for in-crop grasses and Muster Toss-N-Go for in-crop broadleaf control.
He said seeding rates can be lowered with Polish varieties because they have smaller seeds.
Polish canola has good resistance to white rust but should not be grown where there is blackleg.
Trawin said Polish canola is primarily used in the Melfort area for three production purposes:
- It can be harvested by the middle of August if seeded early enough, which would allow a winter cereal to be planted.
- It is used as a last minute canola crop in an emergency to get something in when seeding is delayed.
- Organic growers seed it at a low rate to help their peas stand be-cause Polish canola is not genetically modified and matures at approximately the same times as peas.
Trawin said Polish canola is not a common crop, but there are areas around Melfort that always seem to get an early frost, and some producers grow it to avoid the cold temperatures.
“An old saying is ‘every day in the spring is five in the fall’ — this is probably quite accurate,” Trawin said. “If you sow it in May in the north here, you’ll pretty much for sure combine it early to mid-August. Whereas with the Argentines, you wouldn’t be swathing it around here until mid-August to early September.”
Grain companies such as Cargill say they do not offer a premium for Polish canola, even though it is a non-GM crop.
