A new and improved version of a drought tolerant canola will be made available to a restricted number of farmers next year.
Juncea canola has been grown commercially for a number of years, but a new variety called Xceed is the first to include herbicide tolerance.
The new variety, which is owned by Viterra, is tolerant to the Clearfield production system, allowing for one-pass weed control.
It will be available in limited quantities for the 2009 growing season and will be grown under a closed-loop identity preserved contract.
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“Xceed is the first herbicide-tolerant juncea canola that can be grown in areas not typically suited to canola production,” said Doug Wonnacott, Viterra’s senior vice-president for agri-products.
Its increased heat and drought tolerance makes it ideal for producers in drier regions of Western Canada, he said, adding it also produces a high quality canola oil and meal.
Xceed is a brassica juncea, the formal scientific name for a new type of canola that was developed in the late 1990s by breeding mustard plants to produce canola quality oil and meal, while retaining mustard’s tolerance to hot, dry growing conditions.
The plant’s origins led to the moniker “mustard canola” in its early developmental days, but that term is now verboten.
“We are assiduously avoiding the use of the term mustard in any way,” said Dave Hickling, vice-president for canola use with the Canola Council of Canada.
“It’s not mustard, it’s canola.”
It is ideally suited for hot, dry areas of the Prairies where traditional canola doesn’t fare well, potentially expanding canola area and production.
The new variety also carries increased frost tolerance and pod shatter resistance, which will enable producers to straight cut combine, seen as a big selling point.
“The elimination of swathing is obviously something that generates some fairly good costs savings for farmers,” Wonnacott said.
It also offers strong resistance to blackleg and fusarium wilt, has good lodging resistance and medium maturity.
Wonnacott said the new variety will provide new opportunities to producers who have never grown canola, particularly in the brown and dark brown soil zones.
Hickling said juncea canola could play an important role in helping the canola industry meet its production target of 15 million tonnes by 2015. Production is now around 10 million tonnes.
“A good chunk of that could come from expanding canola area into the southern Prairies.”
He said production could reach one to two million tonnes in the next few years, assuming it proves popular with farmers and goes into open production.
Xceed is the only herbicide tolerant juncea variety, but Hickling said Pioneer Hi-Bred has one in development and more can be expected to get into the game.
Under existing regulations, juncea canola has to be kept separate from other canola through production and delivery. That’s because its yellow seed looks similar to mustard, creating concerns it could become mixed with mustard shipments, damaging mustard markets.
However, after it arrives at the crushing plant, it can be mixed with other canola for the production of oil because it meets all the canola specifications for oil and meal.
“It’s not a specialized oil,” said Hickling.
“It’s just canola oil.”
For regulatory purposes, brassica juncea is simply another type of canola, joining b. rapa (Polish) and b. napus (Argentine).
During the 2008 growing season, Viterra worked with producers to set up 55 test plots of 20 acres each.
Wonnacott said the detailed results from those test plots have yet to be analyzed, but what has been seen to date has been encouraging.
