Farmers could soon reap large dividends from an investment in barley breeding to help overcome fusarium head blight.
Researchers are hopeful that barley varieties with greater resistance to fusarium will be in farmers’ hands within five years.
At Agriculture Canada’s Brandon Research Centre, three experimental barley lines show promise. Two of those are being developed as malting barley and one as feed.
In research trials, those lines have shown a reduction of deoxynivalenol, or DON, by as much as 50 percent, said Bill Legge, barley breeder and the centre’s fusarium project manager. DON is a mycotoxin caused by fusarium that can render barley unfit for malting or for livestock feed.
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“We have a number of years of research data now, so we’re reasonably confident the improvements we’ve seen are real and stable.”
Legge said it is possible that two-row hulless, feed and malting barley varieties with improved fusarium resistance could be registered over the next three to five years.
The disease has been a menace to cereal crops on the eastern Prairies for much of the past decade, driving down the yields and quality of wheat and barley crops.
“Some years it’s worse than others,” said Tom Fingas, a grower from Inglis, Man., who has seen barley fields that might have gone for malt reduced to feed quality because of fusarium.
“There are years when it’s a big issue,” he said.
Last week, the Canadian Wheat Board announced $165,000 to help support the fight against fusarium. The money is part of a joint funding venture with the Western Grains Research Foundation and Agriculture Canada that will see $788,750 spent on fusarium head blight research and related varietal development at the Brandon Research Centre in 2004.
The Western Grains Research Foundation is contributing $373,750 to the shared initiative mainly through check-off dollars from barley growers.
Farmers have been supporting research into fusarium resistance for more than a decade through that research foundation.
Farmers on the eastern Prairies are an important source of malting barley, but there’s increasing reluctance among them to plant the crop because of the fusarium threat, said CWB director Bill Nicholson. However, with the potential to export more malting barley to countries like China, it’s important to keep that crop as an option for them, he said.
Nicholson, who farms in western Manitoba and has seen the effects of fusarium first-hand, said he’s encouraged by the researchers’ progress.
“It certainly sounds like they are making some big steps forward. I guess it will be a continuing battle to catch up and stay ahead (of the disease).”
