| | Farmers like to grow it. Processors want to buy it. Here’s a look inside a long-term industry-government effort to make triticale a mainstream crop.
The 1970s and 1980s saw the rapid growth of canola in Western Canada. Throughout the 1990s and the current decade, special crops like peas, chickpeas and lentils made their presence felt.
Now there’s a new crop on the horizon. Its name might be familiar, but for all but a small band of dedicated growers, it is seldom seen in the crop rotations of Western Canada. That crop is triticale, a man-made hybrid of wheat and rye.
With a host of agronomic and market attributes behind it, don’t be surprised if the decade that starts in 2010 sees triticale hit the big-time. In fact, an industry-government effort known as the Canadian Triticale Biorefinery Initiative (CTBI) is hard at work to make it happen.
Launched in 2004, CTBI is a 10-year, Alberta-led initiative with a mandate to develop triticale as a dedicated bioindustrial crop for Canada. Building on its long-time role as a cattle feed, triticale would supply locally established, world-scale biorefineries that produce a range of products and co-products: renewable energy, platform chemicals, biomaterials, biocomposites and more.
“There are sound reasons why triticale was picked for this initiative,” says CTBI Chair Connie Phillips. “For one, we’re all hearing more about the food-versus-fuel debate. Right now, triticale is not usually used in either. Because it grows well on dry and marginal land, we can expand triticale acres without taking many acres away from food and fuel crops.”
Phillips explains that energy and materials companies are just beginning to learn about the unique properties of triticale. With petroleum prices sky-high, these companies are urgently seeking alternative feedstocks.
Will farmers grow more?
CTBI’s long-term goal for triticale production is ambitious. While the crop is grown on 200,000 acres in Alberta today, the group believes 3 million acres of triticale could be grown by 2015. Is that realistic? Richard Gibson of the Alberta Research Council, who’s also Marketing Manager for the CTBI, thinks so.
“Agronomically, triticale outyields CPS wheats,” says Gibson. “It’s a hardy, drought-tolerant crop that grows well under less-than-ideal conditions. It fits well in a rotation because it’s similar to growing other cereal crops. Environmentally, it requires less in inputs than either wheat or corn. As new industrial markets for triticale-derived products come on stream, we’ll be growing a lot more of it in the future.”
Triticale as hog feed: more pork per acre?
Research is finding that triticale offers significant advantages over wheat in hog rations.
In Western Canada, the current feedstock of choice for the ethanol industry is wheat. While that’s great news if you produce wheat, it’s a mounting problem for hog and poultry producers who use it as feed. Increased competition from ethanol plants has made feed wheat harder to find and more expensive to buy.
A team of researchers believes that triticale could contribute a solution. They’re currently studying the wheat-triticale-ethanol issue from two directions.
“Triticale will be a bioindustrial crop,” says Eduardo Beltranena, Edmonton-based Pork Research Scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Food. “If we could convince the ethanol industry of the value of triticale as a feedstock, this would spare a good deal of wheat that is currently being taken away from pork and poultry producers.”
The adoption of triticale by the ethanol industry would result in a vast amount of a by-product known as dried distillers’ grain solubles (DDGS). While the feed properties of corn and wheat DDGS are becoming better understood, triticale DDGS still has questions to be answered. Beltranena has conducted early-stage research on the feed properties of triticale DDGS for hogs, and plans similar work for broilers.
Triticale as feed: where to from here?
While research on triticale as an ethanol feedstock continues, Beltranena is also looking at the issue from another angle. He’s working to assess triticale’s suitability as a hog and poultry feed.
“The protein level of triticale is a little lower than in wheat, while its starch content is a little higher,” says Beltranena. “This should make it suitable for pig and poultry producers, but until recently, we haven’t had the data to make that case.”
To begin to close this knowledge gap, Beltranena led a study to assess the feeding value of triticale in rations for weaned pigs, compared to HRS and CPS wheats. Triticale was found to have a slightly higher net energy value in hog rations than wheat. The nutrient digestibility of triticale was superior to HRS wheat, and slightly higher or on par with CPS.
Triticale was found to have a clear edge in the availability of the nutrient phosphorus. When pigs are fed barley, about 70% of the phosphorous is excreted by the animal. With wheat, about half the phosphorous is lost in this manner. With triticale, fully two-thirds of this nutrient is used by the animal and only one-third is excreted. Feeding triticale thus reduces the need and expense of adding supplemental phosphorus to the pigs’ diet.
In Beltranena’s view, a clearer picture is emerging of the feed value of triticale. For hog producers concerned about the cost and availability of feed wheat, the news is good indeed.
“If you look at the varieties of triticale we tested, the performance was slightly better than wheat and there was greater availability of phosphorus,” says Beltranena. “Now consider that triticale yields 5% to 20% more per acre than CPS wheat. Therefore you are producing more pork per unit of land and that’s where we see triticale playing a greater role in the future.” |
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