Canola School: Determining the best variety to grow next year

Which clubroot-resistant canola variety with herbicide tolerance trait X is the earliest maturing in your area? What about the highest-yielding blackleg resistant variety with herbicide trait Y?

Every year the Canola Council of Canada administers the Canola Performance Trials — a third-party small plot and field scale evaluation of current canola varieties. The program is funded by the provincial grower organizations with the goal of providing unbiased, high-quality information for growers.

This year, the CCC has compiled summary data from 2011-2016 into an online tool to help growers with variety selection when booking seed for 2018. The “Canola Variety Selection Guide: Featuring CPT Summary Data” booklet explains how to assess data and determine the relevance and statistical significance of the results.

“They’ve done a really good job of breaking up the information in different formats, so you can look at it based on herbicide tolerance, season zone, specific disease resistance packages, etcetera,” explains agronomy specialist Angela Brackenreed in this Canola School video.

“You can narrow in on what’s important on your farm, so if clubroot is important on your farm, you can look just at the clubroot resistant varieties and their performance.”

The searchable database allows you to compare yields, days-to-maturity, lodging and height, from a high level perspective of all varieties across all regions down to the granular view of specific varieties grown at the closest location to your farm.

With growing interest in straight cutting, the 2017 data will also include information on pod shatter tolerance.

The Canola Performance Trials are overseen by the CPT Governance Committee, which is made up of the Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta oilseed specialists, Canadian Seed Trade Association (CSTA) representatives, and representatives from the Manitoba Canola Growers, SaskCanola, Alberta Canola and BC Grain Producers Association. In 2017, the CSTA reps included Bayer CropScience, BrettYoung Seeds, Canterra, Cargill and DL Seeds. Proven Seed/CPS, DEKALB and DuPont Pioneer also contributed to the program.