| | Sustained research is producing more and better varieties. Next up: higher starch and greater digestibility with sound disease resistance.
Over the last few decades, the registration of a new triticale variety has been an infrequent event. That’s changing. As part of today’s focused, multi-disciplinary effort to expand acres and markets for triticale, more and more new varieties have been registered or are in the pipeline.
“One of the key things we’re working on is changing the starch characteristics of triticale,” says Don Salmon, Lacombe-based Plant Breeder for Winter Wheat and Triticale with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development.(ARD) “Doing that would be important in two ways. First, it could assist the adoption of triticale for bio-ethanol applications. Second, it could increase digestibility in livestock rations.”
For farmers who grow triticale today, disease resistance is one of the crop’s key selling points. Salmon and his team are making it a priority to continue triticale’s strong disease resistance in new varieties. This will be important as acreage expands from today’s 200,000 acres to a planned 3 million acres within the next decade.
“Triticale’s disease package is good now,” says Salmon, “but if we added millions of acres of it, you would run into new disease pathogens, so we need to take that into account today.”
Back to wheat and rye
As a cross between two plants – wheat and rye – triticale offers multiple paths to improvement. One is to select for desirable traits from different triticale varieties. Another is to bring desirable wheat or rye material into existing triticale lines. A third approach is to select original wheat and rye materials that, when newly crossed, will result in a superior triticale. This strategy is one that Salmon believes can continue to deliver results.
“On the wheat side, we’ve always had ample material to work with,” says Salmon. “Good rye material has often been harder to come by. But if you can find the best wheats and the best ryes, you should get the best triticale.”
During the 2008 growing season, Salmon and his team field-tested 12,000 individual triticale plants as part of 300 advanced lines at plots near Trochu, Lacombe, Olds and Morinville. He’s looking to continue the momentum of a plant breeding program that’s registered four new triticale varieties in recent years.
“We are starting to look at triticale as being a multi-purpose grain that’s good for feed, for forage and for silage,” says Salmon, “and we are reasonably satisfied with how things are going.”
Commercialization takes time, focus
Piece by piece, says this Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD)
specialist, a critical mass of people and markets are coming together around triticale.
If all goes according to plan, the acreage of triticale in Alberta will expand from just 200,000 today to something on the order of 3 million acres within five to 10 years.
According to Bill Chapman, this ambitious goal can only be achieved if the commercial foundation of triticale is properly established.
“You don’t multiply a crop’s acreage 15-fold overnight,” says Chapman, Barrhead-based Specialist with Agriculture and Rural Development’s Rural Extension and
Development Division.
For starters, he explains, the relatively small number of triticale growers today needs to expand dramatically. These new growers need some agronomic evidence before they’ll add this new crop to their rotation as a grain for feed, food, silage or as a forage crop. The next need is seed. Getting to a million acres’ or more worth of triticale seed will take a concerted effort by seed growers and seed companies.
Who will buy and use all this triticale? Market development, clearly, is a major part of the equation.
Chapman is ARD’s lead on a team of partners from government, universities and agribusiness that’s hard at work laying the groundwork for the long-term expansion of triticale.
“We are working on commercializing triticale as a food, feed and forage crop,” says Chapman, “and to develop Alberta’s acreage base to meet these future opportunities.”
Farmers to grow it, markets to buy it
Last year in Lacombe, triticale took another step toward increased adoption by Alberta farmers. New varieties, uses and breeding developments were prominently featured as part of a major cereal crop field tour for the province’s producers.
On the seed front, varieties are being commercialized by organizations such as SeCan and Farm Pure Seeds. Meanwhile, with the technical advice of ARD and others, potential industrial buyers continue to investigate the future role of triticale.
As market developments for triticale take shape, some producers aren’t waiting around to see how it turns out. One Alberta farmer is already shipping triticale to a prestigious breakfast cereal maker.
To Bill Chapman, the commercialization project illustrates that while lasting change takes time, good ideas tend to win eventually.
“It was like this with CPS wheat,” he says. “CPS wheats started coming out in 1983 or 1984, and it took several years for producers and buyers to get behind them. Now, CPS wheats are widely grown as food and feed and widely used. With time, the same can happen for triticale.
“Wheat and canola have been great for us in this province, but we need something new, and triticale just makes sense.”
For more information go to the Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development website www.agriculture.alberta.ca and search TRITICALE. |
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