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AUGUST 8, 2013 | WWW.PRODUCER.COM | THE WESTERN PRODUCER
NEWS
CROP TRIALS | BRASSICA CARINATA
Elite mustard needs marketing to entice buyers Few brassica carinata users | The crop can be straight combined and production costs are less than canola BY KAREN BRIERE REGINA BUREAU
INDIAN HEAD, Sask. — Brassica carinata is proving itself in trials and commercial fields, but there still aren’t many buyers of the industrial oilseed. “There’s lots of interest, but not users,” said Ken Mudry of Paterson Grain, which markets the crop for Agrisoma, the company that commercially introduced the Ethiopian mustard a couple of years ago. This is just the second year of contracts, he added, and there is a lot of marketing work to do. Forty growers in southern Saskatchewan and Alberta contracted 6,700 acres last year. Last fall, the National Research Council successfully flew a Falcon 20 jet with 100 percent carinata biofuel, and in January Popular Science magazine named it one of the top 25 scientific events of 2012. “It is an elite model at the moment,” Daryl Males, Agrisoma’s director of plant breeding and agronomics, told producers at the recent Indian Head Agricultural Research Foundation field day. IHARF research manager Chris Holzapfel said the crop is treated similar to canola in most respects, but differs in one major aspect: “It is
Visitors to a recent field day at the Indian Head Agricultural Research Foundation examine a crop of brassica carinata. | excellent for straight combining.” Carinata doesn’t shatter as much as canola does. In fact, Males said it is the most shatter tolerant of all brassicas. However, it requires patience at harvest. “It dries quickly but the stems stays green and you need it to be brown,” Males said. Holzapfel said yields are 90 to 95 percent of canola. In 2011 trials,
yields were consistently more than 50 bushels per acre, but that dropped to about 30 bu. per acre last year, as did canola yields because of disease pressure. Two varieties — AAC A100 and A110 — were available this year. Males said the breeding program has resulted in rapidly changing varieties with significant increases in oil content and decreases in glu-
cosinolate content. Mudry said one variety could yield seeds with 50 percent oil content, which could be a game changer in terms of the biofuel market. Gaining European Union certification is critical because of a cap on aviation emissions that will be in place by 2020. The meal is not yet licensed for use in Canada. Mudry said carinata contracts are
KAREN BRIERE PHOTO
priced comparably to canola. “But your production costs are less so the return should be quite favourable,” he said. Males said grower satisfaction was high last year, and the oil is what the aviation industry wants. He said Westjet alone would require 1.2 million acres of crop. “We probably can’t overproduce for biofuels,” he said.
TIMING