Wanted: Oilseed variety open to multiple genetic changes, preferably no bad outcrossing habits, must thrive in hot, dry weather or with wet feet, requires minimum of attention and enjoys open competition with others.
This ad has been placed metaphorically in every plant science journal, university and government agricultural research publication.
The search for a transgenic plant platform that will create as few potential problems as possible is underway in Europe and North America.
For more than a decade researchers have seen the need for an oilseed plant that will fill emerging demands for industrial oils, chemicals and nutritional and pharmaceutical compounds.
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The problem?
“It can’t be an oilseed we currently eat or feed to livestock. It has to be distinct from other oilseeds… . it shouldn’t pose any (genetic) environmental pollution concerns. And it has to have good agronomic potential,” said John Dyer of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Research Service.
In the past three years government and industry alike have shifted gears, moving from a passive drive down research road to a race.
New public funding and venture capital investment are fueling the trip, which is making repeated stops in the Dakotas, Montana and the Canadian Prairies looking for that right plant.
Crambe and camolina, plants that are found in the region as wild varieties, are being evaluated and tested in experimental breeding.
Western Canadian plant breeders say they have better solutions in the form of yellow seeded flax, linola or the close canola relative, the yellow seeded brassica carinata.
But the northern Prairies aren’t alone with promising plants. There is competition from tropical and subtropical crops.
Dyer is a co-ordinator of the joint U.S. and European Union Oilseed Flagship Project that is working to determine a plant platform to which they can add novel traits.
“In the new farm bill we’ve got $150 million in new funding for (oilseed) research,” he said of a U.S. program that is contingent on new co-operation between federal and state researchers.
Sten Stymne, from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, is the EU co-ordinator of that program.
“Both crambe and carinata are good candidates. Crambe is commercially produced now. (Brassica carinata) has (a genetic) model (in canola) and its agronomy is well understood. Both need work,” Stymne said.
Linola is another potential crop that could answer the demands.
This year there will be no linola contracted on the Prairies because Unilever changed requirements for omega 6 fatty acid content in some of its products, opening the door to low priced sunflower.
Paul Dribnenki is one of the 3.2 full-time flax breeders in Canada and has led the linola breeding program at Agricore United since 1990. He has registered seven varieties in Canada and six in Europe.
He told fellow scientists attending an industrial oils workshop in Saskatoon sponsored by the National Research Council and Ag West Bio that linola, an established identity preserved oilseed, should be the crop of choice.
Its visual distinguishability from flax and proven identity preserved production and marketing chain, along with well researched genetics, are advantages for researchers seeking a transgenic platform, he said at the Feb. 28 meeting.
“The door is quickly closing unless we commit (linola),” Dribnenki said.
A commitment to transgenic breeding of the crop wouldn’t put the crop at risk of losing markets like other established food species.
With the flax genome’s map nearly complete, the species has potential for development, said Genome Prairie’s head Jerome Konecsni.
Dyer said the plant that is chosen must be acceptable to investors, who will insist that their “$10, $20 or $40 million investment in breeding won’t suddenly be put at risk.
“I couldn’t tell corn or soybean or canola producers up here that I was planning to add industrial or pharmaceutically useful genes to their crops. That wouldn’t be well received,” he said.
