BreathingLifeintoFlax YOU MIGHT FORGIVE Helen Booker for feel- ing a little lonely these days. As a member of the only public flax breeding program left in Western Canada, she’s always anx- ious to chat about flax. “It’s not exactly a money-making busi- ness, breeding and developing cultivars for these smaller, self-pollinating crops,” says Booker, flax breeder and Ministry of Agriculture Strategic Research Program chair at the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre (CDC) in Saskatoon. The handful of breeding programs for flax that once existed in Canada have been whittled down to two — a small one in Québec, and the other at the CDC. Flax is a crop that, despite its increasing popularity in a variety of foods, is often considered a niche product, and overshad- owed by the likes of wheat, canola, corn and soybeans. Flax acreage in Canada declined to 925,000 acres in 2016 after experiencing steady increases in the previous four years and reaching 1.6 million acres in 2015. The decline in 2016 was primarily due to tre- mendous increases in pea and lentil acres in Saskatchewan and Alberta, notes Don Kerr, recently-retired president of the Flax Council of Canada. Crop alternatives like canola and soybeans in Manitoba in particular have impacted flax acres as well, he says. That’s partly because other countries have hopped on the flax-growing bandwagon, and also because farmers are switching to other crops like canola and soybeans. That’s odd, considering Canada is the world’s leader in the production and export of flax, according to the Flax Council — a position it has held since 1994. In 2014/15, Canada produced about 875,000 metric tons and exported about 80 per cent of it, according to Statistics Canada. In 2015/16, With only one public breeding program left for the crop in Western Canada, flax researchers are trying to get growers to adopt the latest genetics and help usher in a renaissance for this valuable product. Marc Zienkiewicz 46 GERMINATION.CA SEPTEMBER 2017 Canadian flax production totalled 940,000 metric tons. Canada is also the first country in the world to allow a health-related claim for flaxseed on food labels, linking ground whole flaxseed to lower cholesterol — a major risk factor for heart disease. This claim is one of only a dozen deemed to meet the rigorous scientific criteria estab- lished by Health Canada. Those are major honours for any crop. So why is there less flax breeding happen- ing in Canada? “There’s more than a dozen cultivars registered for production in Canada, but flax growers are maybe growing a couple of them. Seed companies can’t make money selling certified seed — there’s just not enough revenue in it,” Booker says. “There’s no real comprehensive business plan for these smaller crops where farm- ers are able to save the seed and replant it, and they don’t have to go and buy seed every year.” That leaves breeders like Booker with a problem. She needs to work hard to ensure Canada remains a world leader in flax, and doing that means improv- ing the crop for the future and continu- ing the introduction of new lines. At the same time, older varieties of flax — CDC Bethune, first registered 19 years ago and the most popular one in Canada — continue to hang on and dominate the marketplace. Booker and the CDC put forward a single flax line earlier this year at the meeting of the Prairie Grain Development Committee (PGDC), and it was recom- mended for registration. FP2513 shows an impressive yield bump — 117 per cent of CDC Bethune in the Zone 1 longer-growing season black and grey soils of Western Canada, where the majority of flax acres “THERE’SNOREAL COMPREHENSIVE BUSINESSPLANFOR THESESMALLER CROPS.” –HelenBooker Helen Booker is a breeder with the only flax breeding program in Western Canada, located at the Crop Development Centre in Saskatoon.