On Wednesday, Protein Industries Canada, along with industry partners, announced an investment of more than $27 million into a canola breeding project focused on making canola hybrids that produce high protein meal for downstream use. This is the first commercial breeding project focused specifically on protein quality improvement. Higher protein canola meal will result in new, diversified, higher value markets for canola meal creating economic benefits across the entire value-chain.
"Canola is one of Canada's most important crops, and this project will have significant impacts along the entire value chain," CEO of Protein Industries Canada Bill Greuel said. "By investing in breeding to improve protein and reduce fibre, we will increase the value of Canadian canola and open up new markets for food and feed applications, resulting in higher demand and prices for the meal."
A consortium including, Corteva Agriscience, Bunge and Botaneco, will invest $14.05 million, while Protein Industries Canada will invest $13.6 million. In this project, genetics from Corteva's breeding programs and public sector sources, such as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, will identify genes that result in high protein and reduced fibre. High protein products delivered from breeding will be scaled up to provide seeds for processing by Bunge and Botaneco to generate meal and high value canola protein products, that are more competitive with other plant-based protein sources for human and monogastric markets, including poultry and pork.
"We're pleased to announce our significant investment to revolutionize Canadian canola, which will open new, higher-value markets and create economic benefits across the entire canola value chain and agriculture industry," said Corteva Agriscience Canada President Bryce Eger. "In addition to our focus on important agronomic input traits for farmers, high protein seed genetics will transform Canadian canola to be both a high value oil and a high value meal crop."
Bunge will process the high protein canola, resulting in high protein meal to be used in poultry and swine feeding studies to quantify animal performance. New end-use markets will also be evaluated using the meal processed by Bunge. Also, high protein canola will be used in Botaneco's novel processing platforms to produce protein concentrates for use in aquaculture studies, and protein isolates for human food testing.
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