Canadian scientist’s mission

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33046, 13 October 1972, Page 9

Canadian scientist’s mission

In the last seven or eight years many farmers in Canada owed their ability to remain solvent to the production of rape seed, Dr J* E. R. Greenshields, director of the Canadian Department of Agriculture’s agricultural research station at Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, said in Christchurch at the week-end.

Dr Greenshields, who has come to New Zealand under a New Zealand senior research fellowship to spend seven months working with the Crop Research Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Lincoln, said that in the process of diversifying away from wheat the acreage in rape seed in Canada had increased from under 500,000 acres in 1960 to more than 5m acres last year, producing 100 m bushels of seed.

The station that Dr Greenshields directs has been the research station mainly associated with this expansion, and while at Lincoln he expects to work on oil seed crops, which are being investigated in this country, and on lucerne in which his station also has a special interest. A plant breeder himself, Dr Greenshields said that some of the better material from their breeding programmes had been sent to New Zealand and was already being grown here and tested. He hopes that his stay here may lead to increased co-operation in this area between the two countries, in that it will give him an insight into the sort of varieties that are likely to be useful here leading to future exchanges of plant material and ideas. A market for some 10m bushels of rape seed had been developed in Canada for oil for production of margarine and for meal for cattle and poultry feed, he said. Exports to Japan amounted to about 20m bushels and had been increasing steadily, and while the European Economic Community had high tariff levels to protect its producers, in years of shortage

exports to Europe were as great as to Japan. Canada could easily dispose of about 60m bushels of seed and as living standards rose world consumption of these oils was increasing, but the market was competitive with supplies of palm oil, for instance, also increasing. Significant advances have been made at Dr Greenshields’s station in the breeding of new varieties of rape. In this programme types have been developed in which the normal erucic fatty acid content of 25 to 40 per cent has been eliminated. Work done in Canada has indicated that in very young rats this caused a fatty infiltration into the heart muscles resulting in the formation of lesions. At the same time as a result of an exchange in the genetic material, the oleic acid content of the seed has been raised from 25 to 30 per cent to 60 to 70 per cent giving a better oil for production of margarine and salad oils. This year in Canada more than 80 per cent of the crop

had been in low erucic acid rape and from January next year domestic crushers would only handle this type of seed, said Dr Greenshields.

They were also seeking to produce rape that would make a better livestock meal by taking out certain detrimental sulphur compounds that were goitregenic in young chickens and pigs. There was material in their breeding programme that was virtually free of these compounds, and with such varieties in use in the future it was expected that there would be an increasing demand for seed for meal purposes. Of much interest to New Zealand is also a programme that has been launched at the station to develop a lucerne that does not cause bloat in livestock. Dr Greenshields said they felt that they had identified the fraction that caused foaming in lucerne and therefore the cause of bloat and his feeling was that the team they had working on this had a 50 to 60 per cent chance of being successful in this project within the next 10 years. He said that he knew New Zealand was also interested in this from the point of view of clover. The Canadian scientist is acompanied by his wife and two sons, aged 16 years and 10 years, who will go to school in Christchurch. The accompanying photograph of the Canadian family was taken this week.