In a year or two, farmers should be able to buy canola seed with the assurance that it has gone through seed training camp.
Only the most vigorous performers will have emerged from the process and be ready to hit the fields for the regular season.
Like a coach building a team for the playoffs, Bob Elliott, Agriculture Canada scientist at the Saskatoon research centre, has been fine tuning tests designed to tell which seed “players” have the right stuff to go the distance and which ones will fold in the face of pest or inclement weather.
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Elliott said his program was established four years ago after too many good canola prospects failed to live up to expectations once they hit the field.
“Canola producers in Western Canada were experiencing a number of problems with poor emergence, poor establishment,” said Elliott.
Seed lots that had scored well in the usual germination tests were mysteriously feeble in the field. Also, germination tests varied from seed lab to seed lab, leading to the possibility of different results from the same seed lot.
In early 1998, a broad range of canola industry players agreed a co-ordinated research effort was needed to address what came to be known as the seedling vigour problem.
Elliott and his team began investigating the standard germination test and other stress trials.
“From that work, we were able to identify the tests that gave us the most precise readings, the tests that were most repeatable over time and that were reproducible from lab to lab,” he said.
Field tests over three years at six locations using early and late seeding dates were done to determine whether the test results accurately predicted field performance.
This combination of lab test assessment and field test checking produced three tests that show promise of being predictors of strong seedling vigour.
One is the standard germination test that has been modified. Usually, this test rates a seed lot on how many seeds have germinated seven days after being moistened. But the count at four days gives the best indication of early emergence and early seedling growth, Elliott said.
So seed companies might be advised to select lots for sale based on perhaps a five day germination count rather than seven day, he said.
Elliott’s team has identified another test that provides a good indication of vigour strength in treated seed.
A third trial, which Elliott calls the seedling vigour test, involves seed placed in pots for measurement of seedling growth and mass. Elliott has found a high correlation between seed yield and biomass three to four weeks after seeding.
An industry steering committee has recommended the modified germination test and the seedling vigour test be adopted and Elliott expects the treated seed test will also be recommended.
This means that after some training workshops, labs across the Prairies will start using the three tests as the standard protocol for assessing canola seed.
The team is now looking at tests to identify seed lots that will have problems if stored for long periods. Seed companies have found that seed that appears good can deteriorate in storage and scientists are not sure what is at fault – the storage conditions, the seed quality or the genetics.
The standard recommendation is that canola kept dry at a temperature under 20 C can be stored indefinitely. But damage is appearing in these conditions.
A reliable test for storage viability might lead to special storage requirements for susceptible varieties.
“Also, if we have varieties out there that are predisposed to deteriorate or are unstable in storage, then I think the breeders have to know this. Maybe it would become another criteria in the development of canola varieties,” Elliott said.
