Scientists at the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre have developed a doubled haploid breeding system for solin, a type of flax designed for food.
The new technique will allow breeders to produce new lines in a shorter period of time, which has important implications for western Canadian farmers.
While world markets for flax and solin are expanding for industrial oil, edible oil, neutraceutical and linen production, only one crop variety of solin is now registered.
“Solin has the potential to supplement canola to meet an increasing demand from world markets for edible oils,” lead researcher Wendy Friedrich said.
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“Although we’ve reached our limit in land available for canola production in Western Canada, there is still plenty of land that could be seeded to solin.”
Solin is a promising crop because its oil is similar to the popular sunflower oils.
Canadian producers have been slow to embrace the crop, mostly because of the lack of variety choice available, Friedrich said. One obstacle has been removed with the new doubled haploid culture process that will cut the time it takes to develop a new variety of solin.
“We feel that the more varieties we can make available to producers, the more likely they are to include solin in their crop rotations.”
In addition to developing another culture system, researchers have also moved closer to developing a microspore culture system.
Although more complex to develop, it would increase the efficiency of doubled haploid production.
“We’re closer to a process that is viable for a whole variety of lines,” Friedrich said.
