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Herbicide tolerant flax several years off

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Published: April 29, 2010

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If all goes according to plan, Canadian flax growers will be planting nongenetically modified, herbicide tolerant varieties in six or seven years.

Cibus Global president Keith Walker predicted it will be four years before the trait is ready to be turned over to breeders. Cibus is the trait development company that the Flax Council of Canada hired to develop the weed-fighting crop.

Walker said breeders will then need another two to three years to breed the trait into suitable varieties.

“Our goal, obviously, is to beat those numbers and get our process finished as soon as we can,” Walker said during an April 22 conference call with reporters while announcing the partnership with the flax council.

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The varieties will have to go through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s plant-with-novel-traits (PNT) regulatory process, which Walker expects to go smoothly.

“We don’t see the PNT process in Canada as a factor that will actually determine the timeline to market,” he said.

Flax council president Barry Hall said herbicide tolerance is a highly sought after trait for the flax industry.

“Flax is not a very good competitor with weeds,” he said.

Herbicides are registered for flax, but Hall said most of them have detrimental effects, such as delaying maturity and reducing yields.

There are also weeds that no product can control. Saskatchewan farmers have been frustrated by one in particular.

“The herbicides available to the grower right now are not very effective on kochia, so this is an increasing problem,” Hall said.

Growers have been clamoring for a herbicide tolerant variety they could use without jeopardizing the European market, which in a typical year buys 70 percent of Canada’s flax exports.

Trade with Europe crashed last year when trace amounts of CDC Triffid, a long-deregistered genetically modified, herbicide tolerant crop, showed up in grain shipments from Canada and in food products made from the oilseed.

Hall said Cibus’ mutagenesis-derived varieties will boost farmer returns without threatening the important European market.

“It will bring the crop into the 21st century,” he said.

Triffid is expected to be weeded out of the Canadian supply long before the Cibus varieties come to market.

About the author

Sean Pratt

Sean Pratt

Reporter/Analyst

Sean Pratt has been working at The Western Producer since 1993 after graduating from the University of Regina’s School of Journalism. Sean also has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Saskatchewan and worked in a bank for a few years before switching careers. Sean primarily writes markets and policy stories about the grain industry and has attended more than 100 conferences over the past three decades. He has received awards from the Canadian Farm Writers Federation, North American Agricultural Journalists and the American Agricultural Editors Association.

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