62 GERMINATION.CA SEPTEMBER 2017 TheHeadlines Submissions welcome: news@issuesink.com across Western Canada.” CS2300 also boasts a great standability rating, making it easier to harvest, as well as a strong resistance to blackleg, he said. This newest introduction from Canterra was acquired through its partnership with DL Seeds, a Manitoba-based hybrid canola breed- ing program. THREE VARIETIES EARN ALL-AMERICA SELECTIONS WINNER DESIGNATION FOR NORTH AMERICA All-America Selections (AAS), cur- rently celebrating its 85th anniversary as the only North American non- profit trialing organization for plants that demonstrate great garden per- formance, announced three new and exciting national AAS Winners. Each of the following varieties was trialed throughout North America by profes- sional, independent, volunteer judges who grew them next to comparisons that are considered best-in-class. This new group of AAS Winners for the 2018 garden season includes: • Corn, sweet: American Dream  • Ornamental: Pepper Onyx Red  • Tomato: Cocktail Red Racer F1   Info on the varieties is available at all-americaselections.org. RESEARCH NEONICOTINOID FIELD STUDY FINDS NO CONSISTENT EFFECTS ON POLLINATORS A new study recently published in Science provides no consistent results on the impact of neonicotinoid seed treatments in oilseed rape on the health of colonies of honeybees, bumblebees or solitary bees. The three-country, large-scale field study was conducted by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) in the UK, and sponsored by Bayer and Syngenta. The aim of the study was to examine the impact on honeybee colonies of foraging on oilseed rape treated or untreated with neonicoti- noid seed treatments under realistic field conditions. A bumblebee and a solitary bee species field trial ran alongside this study. The CEH did not find consistent effects across Germany, Hungary and the UK on key indicators of honeybee health such as colony strength, forager mortality, overwintering success of the colonies, behaviour or disease susceptibility in honey- bees. RESEARCHERS CREATE ‘TIME TUNNEL’ TO DAYS BEFORE AGRICULTURE A global team of researchers announced in the journal Science that it successfully sequenced and mapped the genome of wild emmer wheat. Wild emmer is too low- yielding to be of use to farmers today, but it contains many attractive characteristics that are being used by plant breeders to improve modern-day wheat plants, according to the researchers. The research will have major implications for future food production and secu- rity as wheat breeding technology looks to advances in the nutritional quality of grain, disease tolerance and water conservation, said Hikmet Budak, Montana State University’s Winifred Asbjornson plant sciences chair in the Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology. RESEARCH LOOKS TO QUANTIFY COVER CROP BENEFITS Farmers use cover crops to control soil erosion, but they may have additional benefits to the soil and subsequent crops. A group of university researchers, including two scientists from the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, are seeking to find and quantify these additional benefits. In the two-year study, they are researching potential benefits of cover crops including weed control, nematode control, soil health, insect impacts, economics and forage quality. They are using a cover crop mixture of rye and oats. “We are trying to determine whether using an early maturing soybean variety and following with a cover crop earlier in the fall has any additional benefits to the soil, the sub- sequent crop and the farmer,” said Erin Haramoto, U.K. weed scientist. GM PLANTS PROMISE FISH OILS APLENTY Metabolic engineers have moved a step closer to sourcing fish oils from fields rather than from the oceans with a trio of successful research findings that support the com- mercial cultivation of a transgenic variety of Camelina sativa. They have reproduced results showing that the transgenic plants can grow in the field and have matched the seeds’ biosynthetic products more closely to those of their marine counterparts. The work, published online by Nature in Scientific Reports, comes from a collabora- tion between Rothamsted Research and the University of North Texas. It appears as pressure mounts on traditional supplies of fish oils, which are vital nutrients for human health. Genetically modified camelina, engineered with genes from marine microbes, can produce two highly sought after omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, important in countering the relentless global rise in cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders.