Worldwide Polish rapeseed research continues in only one place – Saskatoon.
Stewart Brandt, a canola breeder from Bayer Cropscience in Saskatoon who attended a conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, earlier this month, said he was surprised to find that breeding research for brassica rapa, Polish canola, has all but stopped across the globe.
“There is almost no breeding at all. All of the big companies have ceased to develop the crop,” he said during a farmer field tour of his company’s crop development centre near Saskatoon.
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Rapa has lost its appeal to producers and represents just five percent of Canadian plantings. As a result, the companies that supply them and the academic institutions where many breeding programs take place have focused on napus, the Argentine canola.
There are 60 Argentine canolas registered in Canada, compared to a dozen Polish. Of the 60 napus varieties, 40 are herbicide tolerant and a dozen are hybrids. Neither of those varietal kinds have been released as rapa plants.
Winnie McNabb of Pioneer Hi-Bred, one of the world’s largest agricultural crop developers, said her company isn’t working on any Polish varieties.
She said the rapa has some advantages to producers and crushers because of earlier maturity and lower levels of saturated fat than napus.
“But (napus) breeders have been working on those things. Shorter seasons, lower fats. But mainly rapa fell behind on disease. It doesn’t breed as easily and it needs resistance to blackleg and other diseases,” said the plant pathologist.
Larry Gusta of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon said the longer seasons of recent years and ease of breeding improved traits have worked against rapa and favoured napus.
“And it doesn’t hurt that Argentine canola, especially the new hybrids, outyield the Polish by a sizable margin,” he said.
Gerhard Rakow, who heads Agriculture Canada’s canola and mustard research at the Saskatoon Research Centre, said rapa research will continue to have a home in his programs.
“It is ready in 80-85 days. No napus will ever do this. Weather in Canada is fickle. Frost can come in June and August. But we need to make some improvements to the crop before it returns to the farmers’ fields,” said Rakow, who in 1994 developed the first high-yielding napus germplasm that displaced the older napus and rapa varieties.
“Summer heat continues to hurt napus,” Rakow said. “Right now it is 32 or 34 degrees (Celsius) out there and the napus is in the middle of its blooming. Rapa is all done and setting seed.”
A variety of Roundup Ready Polish canola was developed, but was withdrawn due to concerns about rapa seed’s ability to remain dormant for several years and its out-crossing tendencies.
Rapa has better shatter resistance and fares better than napus in heat and drought. Because of its early maturity, green seed in harvested samples is rare, so grade reductions seldom occur.
Rakow said the breeding program he oversees for the Polish variety will work on building in disease resistance and reducing dormancy, but will be focused on dramatic yield advancement through hybridization.
“Rapa has far greater potential for high yielding hybrids (due to a larger number of wild varieties). We have already established it is capable of 20-30 percent yield increases. Combine this with 85 day (maturity), disease resistance and herbicide tolerance and it will give napus a run for its money with the farmer. And we will get there. We will do it.”
Rakow said the Ag Canada program in Saskatoon has a full-time breeder assigned to the crop. While attending the Copenhagen meeting, he was approached by Boreal Plant Breeding of Finland, which is interested in working with Canadian researchers on the project.
Brandt agrees that rapa shouldn’t be ruled out.
“It has some characteristics that are still important to producers and we shouldn’t forget that,” he said.
Rakow said in five to 10 years, rapa will be back.
The father of modern canola, Keith Downey, said rapa has a role and while it will never again “have the 85 percent share of the market it once did,” it does have a place.
“Nobody talks about how it could be the way for organic growers to market canola. There are no GM varieties of rapa as of yet,” he said.
“It can be planted ahead of the weeds or later on after the wild oats have emerged and been tilled.”
Downey said research into the Polish plant should continue but so too “the work on marketing it as a crop.”
