Stakeholders were given a research update at the Winter Cereals Manitoba annual meeting earlier in March.
Doug Martin, Board Chair, said the organization has funded work out of the University of Saskatchewan to find the genes for cold-tolerance in winter wheat. He explained this research has been on-going for about four years and the presenters offered a positive update.
"They're making progress on identifying some varieties that have a high level of cold-tolerance and some genes that can be transferred. So between the researchers and our winter wheat breeder in Lethbridge, they're working closely together to try to get this to market eventually."
And while it'll be a while before these new breeds hit the market, Martin feels the organization's research efforts are starting to pay off.
Meantime, winter wheat acres in the province are down this year to about 70,000. Martin noted that's about a 50 per cent decline from last year when about 140,000 acres was planted. He did add however, half the 2016/17 acres were lost to winter kill.
Martin said this reduction in acres is starting to impact the organization's ability to fund research and other projects.
"We're struggling with getting check-off (dollars) to try to keep our organization going. We have money in the bank for our existing projects but going forward we can see that if acres don't increase we're going to have difficulty sustaining what we do."
He remains hopeful that the crop will rebound in popularity and more producers will grow it once again.
As for this year's crop, Martin said only time will tell how it is faring and noted that March is a critical month for the crop.
"Just talking to Ken Gross, he's on our Board and he's an agronomist, he's worked with winter wheat for twenty years and he said they have soil probes across western Canada and the temperatures weren't too bad where the probes where and so he's optimistic."
Source : Steinbachonline