LACOMBE, Alta. – Triticale growers want the 120-year-old plant to become more than a wallflower at the dance.
Triticale, the result of crossing wheat and rye, has been used for years for silage or greenfeed because it is prolific and can withstand droughts.
But Alberta researchers want to improve on that by reducing its height and removing its rough awns without sacrificing the amount of dry matter it produces as a forage.
“Since 1983 we have been trying to develop triticale that didn’t have awns. Now all of our new varieties that are coming out, the winters and springs, are basically almost awnless so there is that option to use it for something else beside silage and greenfeed,” said triticale breeder Don Salmon at a field day at the Lacombe crop development centre July 21.
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“Triticale is no longer six feet tall and waving in the wind,” said Bill Chapman also of Alberta Agriculture. Alberta and the federal government are hoping to take triticale to new a height that includes growing it for biofuel.
The Canadian Triticale Biorefinery Initiative is a 10-year program to develop it as a bio-industrial crop for energy and platform chemicals.
But first, plant breeders need time to develop the cereal with its big heads and strong straw into a multi-use crop by crossing triticale varieties and adding some old wheat strains to remove the awns.
Researchers are also working on semi-dwarf triticale to produce more grain.
Creating new varieties takes time. Salmon and his crew may start with 20,000-30,000 types that are eventually reduced to a handful of viable candidates for registration as a new variety.
From the time they go to a registration trial to pedigreed seed is five to six years but from the early selections to the final release is much longer.
“It’s a very slow moving process. Usually the total period of time is about 12 years and that is not using any of the fancy technology. We are not doing any DNA technology here,” Salmon said.
“All our stuff is normal pollination techniques.”
The process has been speeded up through an international exchange program with Mexico so more generations can be grown in one year.
Mexican scientists are doing more of the development with wheat and rye crosses to get new preliminary triticales. Canadian researchers then develop them into new varieties.
However, there are too few breeders with the triticale program. Salmon spends only half his time working it, devoting the rest of his work to wheat. The only breeding site is at Lacombe with 13 test sites across the Prairies. Six of the test sites are in Alberta.
Salmon said producers must tell plant breeders what they want in a variety, rather than scientists creating new germplasm that no one is interested in growing.
Two new varieties, Luoma and Metzger from this program are available. Luoma has no awns, high yields and good disease resistance. Metzger is also disease resistant and good yields but remains bearded.
New triticale varieties must be resistant to leaf and stem rust to be registered.
Besides limited variety development, little agronomic work has been done.
They know triticale in a barley rotation helps break the disease cycle and mines nutrients so it can work well on heavily manured land.
Researchers are also recommending seeding triticale at around two bushels per acre to get about 20 plants per sq. foot. Doubling the seeding rate results in more stems and smaller seeds. Plant winter triticale in September and harvest for grain in mid-August.
Spring triticale could go in the first week of May and harvest in September. As a hybrid, some of its growing characteristics are different from is parents.
Spring triticale grows relatively slowly compared to other crops and heading out takes longer. This quality may save it from some of the stress of drought this year.
“Triticale can fool you. It can head out the same time as wheat but not flower for another 10 days. It just sits there,” Salmon said.
