Can winter and spring ever be considered equal?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Published: October 31, 2002

Promoters of winter wheat want to break down the class barriers that

separate their crop from spring wheat.

Farmers and researchers attending last week’s annual meeting of Winter

Cereals Canada said their goal is to improve the quality of winter

wheat to the point that it can be put on the shelf alongside its

spring-seeded cousin.

“What we really want is a quality profile of hard red winter wheat that

is no different than hard red spring wheat,” said WCC president Lee

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“If we can make the difference between spring and winter wheat that one

is planted in spring and the other in winter, then it would make

absolute sense to not have a class distinction.”

Winter wheat breeders told the conference they’re confident the day is

coming when the only significant difference between winter and spring

wheat is protein content.

“I don’t think we’re that far away right now,” said Brian Fowler of

the University of Saskatchewan.

Some Canada Western Red Winter wheat varieties are already essentially

the same quality as Canada Prairie Spring red varieties, he said, and

it’s only a matter of time before the same is true for Canada Western

Red Spring.

“My feeling is that we can get there,” said Rob Graf, a winter wheat

breeder at Agriculture Canada’s research centre in Lethbridge, Alta.

Winter wheat promoters say combining winter and spring wheat in one

class based on quality specifications would eliminate costly

segregations in the handling and transportation system, assist in

marketing winter wheat, boost winter wheat prices and allow farmers

more freedom to choose what to grow based on their best net return.

And all that would almost certainly lead to more winter wheat, they

say, as more farmers recognized its economic and agronomic advantages

such as lower costs, higher yields and more efficient use of moisture.

However, the man in charge of quality control at the Canadian Wheat

Board said he doesn’t think that will – or should – happen any time

soon.

Graham Worden, the board’s manager of technical services, said the

marketing agency has talked about the possibility of blending winter

and spring, but concluded it would be a mistake.

It would be “playing with fire” to do anything that might compromise

the quality reputation among customers of the hard red spring class, he

said.”I won’t say we’ll never see it, but the feeling was, and I think

still is, to keep CWRS as a separate class, to keep its quality focus

tight and not potentially jeopardize that fundamental quality advantage

that we have in our system.”

Moats said he thinks customers are sophisticated enough to buy wheat on

the basis of such things as protein content and milling and baking

quality, and not strictly because of the name attached to a class of

wheat.

“The reality for the customer is the specifications,” he said, adding

that it’s well known that elevator companies already blend winter wheat

into spring wheat with no apparent ill effects for the end users.

As for blending winter wheat and Canada Prairie Spring red into one

class, Worden said that’s more likely to happen, but there are problems

to overcome.

For example, CPS kernels are significantly larger than winter wheat

kernels, and mixing them together would cause operational problems for

flour millers. As well, while both are heading toward U.S. hard winter

quality characteristics, he said, there remain “substantial” quality

differences between the two classes.

“But I think there may be opportunities to have blends for some

customers, if we can resolve the kernel size issue,” he said.

Fowler said there is a range of quality within the CPS and CWRW

classes, and within those ranges there are almost certainly matches

that would allow the two to be mixed and marketed together, with the

only segregation based on protein.

He added that due to its higher yields, winter wheat will always have

lower protein than hard red spring wheat.

“I don’t think it’s realistic for us as breeders to try and maintain

the high yields in winter wheat and expect that we might shoot for the

high protein and very high returns of CWRS,” he said.

About the author

Adrian Ewins

Saskatoon newsroom

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