REGINA – Breeders at the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre have released two new varieties of red lentils that should expand the region where the crop is grown in Saskatchewan.
Tom Warkentin told 322 processors and exporters gathered at last week’s Canadian Special Crops Association annual meeting that Redberry and Rouleau could push red lentil boundaries north and east of Regina.
“Those could be ones that could expand lentil production. Redberry in particular has been really well received by international traders,” he said in an interview following his July 26 presentation.
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Canada is the world’s leading exporter of green lentils but ranks fourth when it comes to reds. Warkentin said there’s no good reason for that, especially with new red lentil processing capacity at Saskcan Pulse Trading Inc.
“We could produce and export a lot more red lentils.”
He said the two new early-maturing varieties could displace some canola, pea and cereal acres in the province when they become commercially available in two years.
Breeders at the centre are also trying to create plumper red lentils that are easier to split and green lentils that better retain their seed colour.
Higher crop yield remains the focus of the pea breeding program, something another conference speaker called for during his presentation.
Florian Possberg, chief executive officer of Big Sky Farms, said the domestic hog industry needs a more reliable supply of feed peas. One way of achieving that is for breeders to develop varieties that deliver bigger yields for growers.
Warkentin told CSCA delegates most yellow pea varieties under development are yielding 10-20 percent more than the check variety Alfetta. But the next slide in his presentation showed that the new lines of green peas are delivering slightly lower yields than Alfetta.
“There isn’t really an inherent reason why green peas are lower yielding. It has just worked out that way,” he said.
One scientific explanation for the yield disparity is that the emphasis of the green pea program is on bleaching resistance, which decreases the population of plants that breeders can select for high yielding characteristics.
Another is that breeders in Europe and Canada tend to focus on yellow varieties because there is a bigger market for that class of peas.
Warkentin also noted a new line of kabuli chickpeas dubbed CDC Frontier that boasts a better level of ascochyta blight resistance than existing varieties, although he said no chickpea, either commercialized or under development, has what can be classified good resistance.
“We call it fair, which might mean in a practical sense maybe one or two fungicide applications in a year instead of three or four with some of the other varieties that farmers have been growing.”
Frontier produces an eight millimetre seed, which isn’t large enough to capture the top premiums but should still fetch a reasonable price in world chickpea markets. Seed should be available to growers in about three years.
