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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Moats.
“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.
