Winter Canola in the Northern Rockies

Researchers Involved:

Project Description:

Objective: to test the importance of fall irrigation, fall seeding date, seeding rate and cultivars for winter canola survival, seed yield and oil production.
Industrial bio-oil projects depend on feedstock oil crops with a low cost per unit of production. One example of this in Montana is the current research focus on low input production of camelina, a crop with modest yield potential. An alternative approach to achieving low cost per unit of production would be to target a high yield potential crop (i.e. winter canola), with a more typical crop input budget. In the northern Rockies region, winter canola is expected to have a significant yield advantage over spring canola due to the improved synchrony of plant growth with evapotranspirative demand. Winter canola research has been underway since 2000 at Bozeman and 1998 at Kalispell generating key genetic and agronomic knowledge that requires further research. Under dryland conditions at Bozeman, genetic lines from Kansas State University outyielded genetic lines from Russian breeding programs, as well as commercial cultivars from northern Europe due to superior winter-hardiness in dry soil conditions. Fall irrigation was initiated for the 2004 trial at Bozeman, improving winter survival greatly for all lines, and the KSU genetic lines yielded greater than the Russian and European genetics, with the top 7 KSU lines averaging more than 50 bu/ac. However, under conditions for excellent winter survival at Bozeman and Kalispell in 2005, it was apparent that the KSU genetic lines lack yield potential compared with some European cultivars (Fig. 22).

Fig. 22