Province Releases Soybean Maturity Zone Map

Jan 27, 2017

Soybeans are being grown in areas of the province only once dreamed of.

It's all thanks to the development early maturing varieties.

Manitoba Agriculture Pulse Specialist Dennis Lange says that back in the year 2000, there were only two mid-season varieties available, while in 2016 there were over 65 varieties tested in provincial trials.

"If you look at what growers are actually growing, within our top 10 varieties there's only two long-season varieties," he explained. "The rest of the varieties are early to mid-season. What it's showing us is that there's a move towards early maturing and that's really helped expand the acres in Manitoba."

Lange says soybean acres in Manitoba have expanded from about 20,000 in the year 2000, to over 1.6 million acres grown in 2016. That number could reach 2 million acres this growing season.

He adds in 2015 almost 40 per cent of soybeans were grown in the western part of the province and that number keeps increasing.

Source : Portageonline

Video: New research chair appointed to accelerate crop variety development

Funded by Sask Wheat, the Wheat Pre-Breeding Chair position was established to enhance cereal research breeding and training activities in the USask Crop Development Centre (CDC) by accelerating variety development through applied genomics and pre-breeding strategies.

“As the research chair, Dr. Valentyna Klymiuk will design and deploy leading-edge strategies and technologies to assess genetic diversity for delivery into new crop varieties that will benefit Saskatchewan producers and the agricultural industry,” said Dr. Angela Bedard-Haughn (PhD), dean of the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at USask. “We are grateful to Sask Wheat for investing in USask research as we work to develop the innovative products that strengthen global food security.”

With a primary focus on wheat, Klymiuk’s research will connect discovery research, gene bank exploration, genomics, and breeding to translate gene discovery into improved varieties for Saskatchewan’s growing conditions.