Canterra Seeds says the planned move of CDC Falcon from the Canada Western Red Winter class to the Western General Purpose class has heightened the level of interest among winter wheat growers in AC Emerson.
Canterra Seeds has scheduled the broad-scale introduction of AC Emerson, a new Canadian Western Red Winter milling wheat, for the fall of 2014.
The new variety, developed by Dr. Rob Graf with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge, is the first wheat in western Canada to be rated resistant to fusarium head blight.
Brent Derkatch, the Director of Operations and Business Development with Canterra Seeds, expects AC Emerson to be of particular interest to those growers who had relied on CDC Falcon.
The Canadian Grain Commission is proposing to move CDC Falcon to the General Purpose Class next August and so this variety, Emerson, being released on a large scale at that time will be a great opportunity to replace Falcon in the milling class market for winter wheats and of course the Fusarium Head Blight itself with the R rating has given us a lot of attention and clearly is a big focus for many producers.
As far as the specifics to end use quality, there is some small plot data that has been generated to evaluate the suitability for end uses for milling purposes.
We’re continuing to do some additional testing in that respect as well because we’ve now moved our seed production into larger field scale which is going to be a little but more reflective as well on what primary producers will be able to produce so we’re going to continue to evaluate that further before we jump to any conclusions but it is classified as that Canadian Western Red Milling Class so that will be our focus for sure.
Derkatch acknowledges more work is needed to better understand AC Emerson’s end use quality fits but he’s convinced it’s going to be a valuable variety for producers.
