"Bio-industrial products are developed from crops using conventional breeding and molecular technologies," says Don Salmon, plant breeder with Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development's crop development - non-food branch, Lacombe. "These products include modified oils, bioplastics, enhanced biofibers, biochemicals and biodiesel. In the industry, these are known as renewable energy, enviro-materials and enviro-products."
Salmon, along with his triticale team, has released two new triticale varieties to two independent organizations. These varieties will be targeted to the ethanol market in addition to feed and fodder markets. The varieties that can be grown across the prairies have a 15 to 20 per cent higher yield than wheat. They are also disease resistant.
"It is anticipated that crops such as triticale will be the platform for further improvements, following on the success of input traits, such as herbicide resistance, and abiotic stress resistance, such as drought tolerance," says Christine Murray, branch head, crop development - non-food, Alberta Agriculture, Edmonton.
To optimize the efficient production of bio-products, including research, development and regulation cost, crops are being developed as platform technologies - single species used to produce a range of products. Just as canola has been a platform for the production of edible oils, meal and biolubricants, these crop platforms will support a range of valuable products. The choice of crop platforms encompasses climatic suitability, agronomic system compatibility, biosafety risk and exclusivity. Flax and triticale are suitable crops in Western Canada as the oil and starch based crop platforms.
"Interdisciplinary research is required to build crop platforms, from the selection, transfer and optimization of transgenic traits for bio-product production, to agronomy, bio-safety risk assessment, breeding, biochemistry, and basic biotechnology and genomics," says Salmon. "Product utilization and processing is an integral part of this program and research objectives must be driven by market demands for products, in cooperation with industrial partners. Coordinated, multi-disciplinary research needs to be conducted in parallel, rather than sequentially, if we are going to be internationally competitive in bringing these crop products to market in a timely fashion."
The advances made already by the triticale team are just some of the first successes in developing the new varieties that will lead us into a sustainable, renewable resource-based future.
Contact:
Don Salmon (403) 782-8694
Christine Murray (780) 644-1986
Source: Alberta Agriculture
