Growers in southern Saskatchewan will soon have new oilseed crops to add to their rotations.
Genome Prairie is spearheading the $4.5 million Prairie Gold initiative, a three-year research project aimed at developing new lines of camelina and Brassica carinata, two industrial oilseeds that can be grown in the province’s brown soil zone.
The Canada-Saskatchewan Western Economic Partnership Agreement provided the initial funding for the project.
“It’s a significant start to what is a big job,” said Genome Prairie president Wilf Keller.
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The goal is to create two non-food oilseed crops that will be used to make a range of high-value industrial products.
Keller figures growers in southern Saskatchewan will soon be able to generate similar returns from camelina and Brassica carinata to those that growers in the dark brown and black soil zones derive from canola.
Saskatchewan Party MLA Ken Cheveldayoff said there should be no food versus fuel debate associated with these new industrial crops, which can be grown on marginal land in the driest areas of the province south of the Trans-Canada Highway.
“We live in a province with sprawling arable land that can be used for industrial crops without affecting the acreage for food crops,” he said in announcing the province’s $3.5 million contribution to the project.
The money will be spent by a collection of private companies and public laboratories attempting to improve the agronomic performance and oil profiles of the two crops.
Keller said the WEPA funding will get the ball rolling on the camelina and Brassica carinata industries, which may take five to 10 years to develop.
“It’s a good investment but it’s certainly not a luxurious investment. We would be looking for more dollars.”
Some of the required regulatory and agronomic work includes getting camelina meal approved for animal feed, shortening the growing period for Brassica carinata and boosting yields of both crops.
Researchers will also modify the oil profiles of the crops to make them more suitable for lubricants, greases, plastics and other high-value industrial products. That will be accomplished through both conventional breeding and genetic modification.
Linnaeus Plant Sciences, a Vancouver biotechnology company, is one of the private firms working on that aspect of the project for camelina.
“The type of oil it makes is not ideal for industrial purposes,” said company president Jack Grushcow.
Linnaeus will be attempting to develop high oleic genetically modified lines of camelina well suited for industrial applications and will also be working on improving oil from conventional camelina lines through further processing.
It could be five years before GM camelina lines make it through all the regulatory hoops and three years before conventional camelina oil can be transformed into something more useful.
Linnaeus recently signed a technology licensing agreement with DuPont and has a research relationship with Arkema Inc., France’s fifth largest chemical company. Both chemical companies are potential customers for Saskatchewan camelina oil.
“When we know we can make a buck, that’s when we’re going to be going to the farmers and not until then,” said Grushcow.
Keller said it should be relatively easy to grow GM camelina in identity preserved systems because the crop does not cross with canola, its seeds look very different and it will be planted in a different geographic area than the Cinderella crop.
Brassica carinata is a closer relative to canola so extra steps will have to be taken with that crop, such as changing its seed and flower colour.
