UCalgary research on canola could help save farmers both time and money

An agricultural science team at the University of Calgary has discovered several new approaches to create shatter-tolerant canola crops.

The research, published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could help farmers save both time and money.

“One of the cash crops in Canada is canola,” says Dr. Marcus Samuel, PhD, a professor of Biological Sciences who’s corresponding author on the paper. “It is a pride of Canada and the annual input to the economy is about $44 billion.

“One of the things farmers struggle with is pod shattering.”

He explains that farmers want the plant to be nice and dry when they go to harvest the seeds at the end of the growing season. The seeds, though, are inside a little pod that can shatter during the cutting process.

The paper notes that pod shattering can lead to an average seed loss of three per cent — a $1.3 billion hit to the economy — to as much as 50 per cent under harsh weather conditions.

Farmers typically use a swather, a farm machine that cuts the crop and lays it into rows to dry, because they don’t want the pods to pop and seed to be scattered. They then must use a combine harvester to gather the pods once they are dry.

“That means dual fuel,” explains Samuel.

The research done by his team means farmers could instead harvest the plant with a straight cutter, meaning one machine pass on the field rather than two.

“Farmers are spending a lot — their input costs have gone up for using the current commercial shatter tolerant varieties,” he notes. “They are spending over $80 an acre on the seed cost alone” plus other costs such as fuel and fertilizer.

Samuel and his team developed a new technology to achieve shatter tolerance as part of their research.

“We found a protein that strengthens the pod. It’s almost like cementing it so that the little shakes won’t pop it open, but it still forms the seam properly that you can crack it open,” he explains.

That cement, which is called lignin, needs just the right amount.

The research showed about seven out of 10 pods broke in the control group, but the increased protein changed that to one in 10.

“It’s a genetic modification,” says Samuel. “We can also do it through non-GM technologies and achieve the same outcomes.”

Samuel says the technology will lead to better canola for a more reasonable cost.

“It’s a lot of science that has gone into it — close to eight to 10 years of work,” he says, noting that meant one-and-a-half PhDs. “It started in 2015-16 and we just published.”

Two of his former students who co-authored the paper now run a company called AgGene, a plant biotechnology startup focused on the development of high-protein crops and biotech traits to provide food for the future.

“It’s very exciting to see this project get published,” says Dr. Logan Skori, PhD, who’s CEO of AgGene. “I grew up on a grain farm and one of the things we dealt with growing canola was pod shattering.

“Over the last decade, scientists have made a lot of contributions to figuring out genes that are important to pod shattering and to be able to add a little piece of that puzzle is exciting.

“Certainly, with our company, we are working on traits like pod shattering — and hopefully we can bring this to a farmer’s field one day.”