Monsanto’s recent news release about the pending commercialization of its TruFlex canola looks eerily similar to one issued five years ago.
Both releases contain many of the same quotes, but some of them are attributed to different company officials in the latest release.
The biggest difference is the initial news release says the company hopes to commercialize the new trait in 2014, while the second one says it will hit the market in 2019.
TruFlex will be Monsanto’s first new biotech trait made available to Canadian canola growers since Roundup Ready was introduced in 1996.
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The company claims growers are clamouring for the technology, so why the lengthy delay in getting it into their hands?
It had to do with getting import approvals in key markets and this time it wasn’t the European Union that was the holdup.
“There were a number of things that happened and they all relate to China changing their requirements and changing their requirements more than once,” said Monsanto Canada spokesperson Trish Jordan.
For instance, part way through the approval process, China announced that companies would have to perform in-country testing of their new traits.
That process involved getting a permit to grow the crop, going through an entire growing season and collecting, analyzing and submitting the data. It added two years to an already lengthy approval process.
China still hasn’t approved the TruFlex trait, which was approved by Canadian regulators in 2012. Monsanto says approval from China is pending and should be granted in the first quarter of 2019.
The company has informed the trade it won’t move any TruFlex seed into commercial position until Chinese approval is in place.
TruFlex offers growers a new and improved version of glyphosate tolerance.
“What it’s really doing is providing stronger expression of the protein that prevents glyphosate from doing its job and killing the plant,” said Dave Kelner, North American canola portfolio manager for Monsanto.
“There were some gaps in what the current technology offers, and now those are basically filled.”
The trait allows growers to manage hard-to-control weeds like cleavers, foxtail barley, wild buckwheat and season-long control of dandelions.
It provides growers with 10 to 14 more spray days than Roundup Ready canola and allows farmers to apply Roundup at higher rates without damaging the crop.
Dekalb will offer two hybrids containing the trait in 2019. The hybrids will have a high level of shatter resistance as well as clubroot and blackleg resistance.
It is possible the company will have a third stacked product available for growers next year as well that contains both the TruFlex and Liberty Link traits.
Competitors will also have TruFlex offerings available next year. Kelner thinks there could be five or six competing hybrids on the market.
Bernie McClean, a canola grower from Glaslyn, Sask., has been eager to get his hands on TruFlex canola since he first heard about the trait.
“I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve been bugging the Dekalb agronomist since 2011,” he said.
McClean said it will be nice to get on top of some of the hard-to-control weeds on his farm.
“Wild buckwheat is actually a tough one to control, especially if it gets a little bit bigger. And using the half rates, that was always the difficulty,” he said.
The wider window of application is another feature he likes. McClean recalls standing in rubber boots in a muddy field three or four years ago during spray time wondering what he was going to do.
“It was actually a pretty stressful time there trying to decide exactly how I should tackle what was in front of me,” he said.
By the time the weather dried up the crop was at a later-than-recommended stage of development for spraying, but he sprayed it anyway, thinking the spray damage was preferable to allowing the weeds to rob the crop of yield and generate more seeds.
Monsanto intends to use TruFlex as the base platform for all future canola traits in its research pipeline. It will eventually replace all the Roundup Ready canola in the Dekalb lineup.
“We believe it will be a fairly quick transition to the new trait that should take place over just a few years,” said Kelner.
