If variety is the spice of life, the prairie wheat crop is pretty bland.
There are dozens of wheat varieties available to prairie farmers, but they have increasingly turned to just one – AC Barrie.
A Canadian Wheat Board survey of 22,000 producers showed Barrie accounted for 48 percent of the acreage seeded to hard red spring wheat in 1999, up from 29.4 percent in 1998. Its popularity reflects the variety’s higher yields and increased protein content.
In Manitoba, it accounted for 64 percent of seeded acres, in Saskat-chewan 51 percent and Alberta 33 percent.
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The man who developed AC Barrie says that while it’s gratifying to see how well it has been accepted, that feeling is tinged with some concerns.
“When you end up with a high degree of homogeneity it’s always a concern from a genetic conservation point of view,” Ron DePauw said in an interview from the Agriculture Canada research centre at Swift Current, Sask.
It’s not unusual for one variety to assume a dominant position, he said. Thatcher, Neepawa and Katepwa have done so in years past, while Kyle accounts for 78 percent of durum acres and Harrington takes up 56 percent of two-row malting barley.
There is no question that genetic diversity is an important part of a healthy agronomy. For example, this year the crop was infected with new races of leaf rust to which Barrie was not resistant.
That could lead more farmers next year to plant varieties that are resistant, such as AC Elsa, AC Cadillac and AC Intrepid, especially in traditional rust areas of the southern Prairies.
“But there is no perfect variety,” DePauw said, noting those varieties aren’t as tolerant of fusarium as Barrie. He said it also emphasizes the importance of farmers continuing to contribute to the Canadian Wheat Board’s research checkoff, which allows scientists to get money from the Western Grains Research Foundation to develop better varieties.
