ARDROSSAN, Alta. — Having a research centre just down the road from his farm gives Vegreville farmer Daryl Tuck confidence he will be growing canola for many years.
“One of the biggest advantages to having a facility like this in the region is they’re doing research that’s relative to our conditions and problems that are here,” said Tuck, during the grand opening of DuPont Pioneer’s Edmonton research facility.
Developing hybrid canola varieties is the focus of the new 15,000 square foot research facility along busy Highway 16, east of Edmonton, complete with high-tech greenhouses and laboratories.
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Setting up a canola research centre in the heart of the most productive canola growing region in Western Canada was a natural choice, said Dave Charne, Pioneer’s research director for crop product development.
“For me this is the highest productivity part of Western Canada for canola. With deep black soil and ideal climate, you’re able to achieve the highest yields in Western Canada. It’s important for us to test our products and do our breeding under the conditions that farmers are going to grow their crops,” said Charne.
The area around Edmonton, where canola is grown more often than the recommended rotation with cereals and other crops, is also ground zero for diseases like clubroot and sclerotinia.
Charne called central Alberta the “red zone” for clubroot, but the high-yielding area is also ideal for sclerotinia.
“I think of (sclerotinia) as the hypertension of the canola industry. It’s the silent killer. It’s stealing yield constantly from growers’ fields.”
It’s the reality of tightening canola rotations that has researchers scrambling to stay ahead of canola disease, said Charne.
“It’s our job as researchers and breeders to try and reduce that risk as much as possible with disease resistance. Tightening rotations is just a reality. It is working, it’s not ideal agronomically, but it is working. It is giving us a lot of challenges,” said Charne, of Caledon, Ont.
Gordon Tuck, who also farms near Vegreville, said knowing scientists are working on diseases like clubroot is a comfort to him as a local canola grower.
“It’s something I think that is important. We have local problems,” said Tuck, pointing to Pioneer’s clubroot and sclerotinia resistant varieties as ways the local research is helping local farmers.
“It certainly helps out if we make use of them,” said Tuck.
Having private research take over canola research is not a concern for Tuck, as he has watched canola varieties develop far quicker than publicly-funded grain research.
“Private research is a good thing. Unfortunately we’re paying for it.”
Daryl Tuck said private money is pushing the industry forward.
“They’re making money off our backs by the products we buy, but we’ve adopted some of this technology because it makes us money over older technology,” he said.
Ian Grant, Pioneer DuPont’s president, said the new research facility cost “millions of dollars” and is just one of a network of Pioneer’s seven research centres across Canada, three of them in Western Canada.
“We see Western Canada as having a lot of untapped potential.”
Pioneer has 12,000 employees in 19 countries, with Canada the third largest country for the company. Pioneer employs 430 employees in Canada.
In the past 15 years, canola research has gone from 100 percent public funding to almost 100 percent private funding that has created enormous advances in yield and disease resistance, said Grant, at Ardrossan for the open house.
“That’s a result of private investment. That trend is only going to continue. Breeding and development belongs in the private sector and some of the research and discovery things belong in the public sector,” he said.
“Our objective is to create hybrids that are adapted to this type of climate.”
Retired Viking farmer Richard Nordstrom said farmers have been driven to grow more canola than they should because of poor cereal markets. It’s private research like Pioneer’s new facility that will help farmers prevent canola wrecks caused by growing it in tight crop rotations.
“It’s only by the grace of God and weather patterns that we haven’t had any problems,” said Nordstrom.
