As climate change alters growing conditions, Canadian researchers are working with farmers to breed canola for a future of extremes, with the hope of developing more heat-tolerant varieties for the future. Canola, sometimes called the Cinderella crop because of its success story in Canada, contributes more than $29 billion in the economy every year. An abbreviation of the words Canada and oil, canola is a specific group of rapeseed varieties grown for cooking oil and animal feed. But before reaching North America, canola was cultivated in Asia for thousands of years. Canadian production only increased during World War II, to meet a critical shortage of marine engine oil.
Climate change interrupts the Cinderella story
It wasn’t until the 1960s that plant breeders in Saskatchewan and Manitoba developed varieties that produced quality, edible oil. After that, it was a quick climb to success. But the industry took a hit when, in the summer of 2021, Western Canada was engulfed in heat and drought. Most of Canada’s canola is grown in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Due to extreme heat and drought, production fell to its lowest level since 2007 and canola yields fell by 40 percent, according to a report by Statistics Canada. A deer pokes its head out over a canola field near Olds, Alta. In just a few decades since its introduction to Canada, canola has become one of the most important oilseed crops in the world and a highly profitable product for Canadian farmers. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press) “2021 was bad,” said Dean Roberts, a small grain farmer who grows canola, wheat, barley, peas, lentils and flax in Coleville, west-central Saskatchewan. Roberts, who spoke to CBC News while he was out exploring his fields, said last year’s heat cut his yields in half, if not more. “It’s been too hot and too dry for too long,” said Roberts, who is a Canadian Canola Growers Association board member and SaskCanola board director. “We can handle a certain amount of heat and a certain amount of drought, but this was too much of anything.” WATCHES | Grain farmer shows heat and drought damage to his canola field in 2021:
Manitoba grain farmer experiences drought, heat damage in canola field
Brad Erb, a grain farmer in Manitoba and the chief of the Macdonald Rural Municipality, shows the damage caused to one of his canola fields by drought conditions and high temperatures. Erb said future rain could help farmers in the area, but it’s already too late for some crops this season.
Heat vs canola: A two-pronged attack
Heat doesn’t just damage canola by drying out the soil. The cool season crop also suffers if there are large areas of high temperatures during the flowering period, which is usually late June and early July in Western Canada.
Malcolm Morrison, an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada researcher who specializes in oilseeds, said heat during flowering impairs the viability of canola pollen, as well as its ability to self-fertilize and eventually fertilize. .
“Canola is not a tropical crop,” Morrison said.
While plants can sometimes recover after a few hot days by producing new flowering branches, this will delay ripening – a problem for Western Canada’s shorter growing season.
Heat can also cause flowers to abort or not form seed pods – meaning no oil seeds.
“You really get a double whammy from the weather; you run out of moisture and the flowers fail, so you lose yield on both sides of that equation,” Roberts said.
Chad Koscielny is pictured next to one of the experimental canola fields used for breeding programs in Manitoba. (Submitted by Chad Koscielny)
While his crops fared better in 2022, Roberts knows the future will be unpredictable.
Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions contribute to more frequent and more intense heat waves and Canada is no exception.
Roberts said he doesn’t think any canola variety on the market right now could withstand a 2021 repeat.
“I think it’s up to plant breeders now to go back to their genetics and start chasing some of that heat tolerance as it becomes more widespread.”
That’s exactly what a team of plant breeders at the University of Manitoba hopes to do.
Breeding plants for 20 years into the future
Rob Duncan, a University of Manitoba professor and canola breeder, is working on developing heat-tolerant canola varieties with Chad Koscielny, the North American canola breeding lead at Coteva Agriscience. “You always have to look ahead,” Duncan said. “You’re essentially predicting how the varieties you’re producing now [are] it will adjust in 10 or 20 years or in the long-term future.” Duncan said they’ve had some promising results through selective breeding — mixing certain canola varieties to create hybrids with better heat tolerance. Canola is stored in bins pictured on a farm near Starbuck, Manitoba. (Austin Grabish/CBC) While the new varieties are not yet ready for the commercial market, Koscielny said the goal is to help farmers be better prepared if the 2021 heat dome repeats. “These hybrids have the potential to expand potential canola acres and minimize the effects of extreme environmental events,” he said. Morrison said he believes the scientific community will find sustainable solutions as growing conditions change. “We need to make our crops more flexible,” he said. “I think one of the best ways to do that is to have active plant breeding programs.” The hard thing for farmers is that climate change isn’t just making things hotter, it’s also making things more unpredictable, Morrison said. “If only we could say, oh boy, we’ll always be able to plant our crops on April 5 [from now on]but we can’t because one of the things with climate change is that there’s an increase in variability.”
Canola farmers are no strangers to innovation
If breeders can develop a more heat-tolerant variety, it wouldn’t be the first time research has helped canola growers adapt to the harsh elements on rangelands. Roberts recalls how, in older canola varieties, the pods would fall and break in a big windstorm. Breeding programs responded by developing more resistant varieties. He said the heat will be the next challenge. “We’re going to need more robust varieties in the future. I don’t know if we’re there right now.” Duncan agreed and said farmers may also need to consider diversifying their portfolio, so to speak, by planting a mix of canola varieties in their fields, some flood-tolerant, some heat-tolerant. He said breeding is only one part of the climate adaptation puzzle and that agricultural strategies, including no-till and irrigation, are also part of the equation. While Roberts acknowledges that’s true, he said farmers are already doing what they can on the ground. “We deal with climate change more than the general public,” he said. “We are very directly connected to our land and the weather.” “Genetics is where most of the movement should come from.” Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative called “Our Changing Planet” to show and explain the effects of climate change. Keep up to date with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page.
