Sitting on a laboratory table at Brett-Young Seeds’ research
headquarters are plastic bags of primitive life forms that company
researchers think could be worth $500 million a year to prairie farmers.
The bags contain various ways of packaging the same thing –
sulfur-oxidizing bacteria that could solve a big production problem for
canola growers.
The bacteria could become as important for canola as nitrogen fixing
bacteria are for pulse crops.
Brett-Young is spending years, and millions of dollars, to make this
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theoretical possibility a commercial reality.
“We know this works here,” said Manas Banerjee, Brett-Young’s director
of research and development.
“The trick is to make it work out there in the fields.”
Canola is a major consumer of sulfur. The plants use it to make protein
and oil, the products that make canola its money.
Farmers used to get sulfur added to their fields when they applied
ammonium sulfate fertilizer.
But in recent years many farmers have switched to forms of nitrogen
with higher analysis such as anhydrous ammonia or urea, said Canola
Council of Canada senior agronomist John Mayko.These do not contain
sulfur.
With producers now pushing canola yields higher with higher yielding
varieties and better management practices, the drain of sulfur from the
soil has increased. Many canola crops have suffered yield loss because
of sulfur deficiencies and farmers have few choices of how to remedy
the situation.
The concentration of sulfur in ammonium sulfate is such that it is a
challenge for most farmers to use if a severe problem shows up after
seeding.
Not only is it bulky, but farmers do not want to make special field
operations to apply only one element.
“They want one-pass seeding,” said Mayko.
Many people believe that applications of elemental sulfur are good
because they provide long-lasting supplementation.
But plants can’t directly use elemental sulfur. It must be broken down
by soil bacteria and turned into sulfate for the plants to use it, and
that generally takes about one year.
“It can’t be used as a rescue source or as a treatment for an acute
sulfur problem,” said Mayko.
Brett-Young’s research is designed to take soil-dwelling rhizobacteria
that break down sulfur and deliver the bacteria along with canola seed.
Then, when the seed hits the soil, so do the bacteria that will quickly
make elemental sulfur available to the growing plants.
Banerjee said scientists have identified bacteria that will work, and
small tests have shown that introducing the bacteria into
sulfur-depleted soils has markedly increased plant size and production.
But the problem is that bacteria are living organisms and cannot be
stored indefinitely. They are delicate and need to be added in a way
that keeps them alive through the seeding process, but that also makes
them easy for farmers to use.
Researchers are experimenting with the major delivery systems,
including seed coating, peat moss and granules.
Manitoba Agriculture soil specialist John Heard said sulfur-oxidizing
bacteria that can make elemental sulfur more readily available would
offer growers another alternative in their canola management systems.
“It may change or temper people’s fertility practices,” said Heard.
Mayko said sulfur deficiencies are likely to be an increasing problem.
“Growers are targeting higher and higher yields, and they are going to
need more and more sulfur,” said Mayko.
Brett-Young chief executive officer Lloyd Dyck hopes to fill that need.
“We think in the long run it’s going to help farmers,” said Dyck.
“Its benefit is probably worth about half a billion dollars a year if
we can find a proper delivery mechanism to get it to farmers in the
field.”
