Move over canola, there’s a new kid on the block and she’s called Camelina..Except she’s not exactly new. Camelina sativa, commonly known as Camelina or false flax, is an annual oilseed plant in the mustard family native to Europe. .Although it sees fairly limited cultivation in North America and Europe today, Camelina was grown extensively since medieval times for oil and protein, but was replaced by the cultivation of rapeseed during the 1940s and followed by canola today..Now a US company called Yield10 Bioscience is using it as a “platform” to engineer new varieties specifically tailored for Western Canadian growing conditions that, in the future, will offer several key advantages over traditional crops, Darren Greenfield, senior director of seed operations, said in an interview. .Those include including drought and cold tolerance that allows it to be sown over winter and used as ground cover. In addition, a shorter growing season makes it an almost ideal fit for local seed crushers and processors, he added. In the future, the company intends to add specific gene editing to adapt for a variety of uses, from typical seed oil to plastics and even biofuels..One day it hopes Camelina will become just as prolific as canola on the prairies. “We’re basically where canola was 30 years ago,” Greenfield said..The company is looking to start limited trials and is offering 100% end to-end contracts — meaning it will buy 100% of the production at the end of the season. Greenfield, who is based in Lethbridge, says input costs are roughly half of canola and Camelina offers similar full-cycle returns..Prairie farmers sowed about 1,000 acres this winter and looking to contract at least that much next spring while Yield10 uses the results to hone its product offerings. About 50,000 acres are currently cultivated in Canada. By contrast, Canada typically sees about 20 million acres of canola planted in a year..The highest interest has been in Alberta and Manitoba, he said, and Saskatchewan as well. But he admitted it can be a tough sell to get people to try something new while traditional markets are robust..“This is something most guys haven’t seen before,” Greenfield said, and chuckled: “There’s a lot of farmers more interested in having their neighbours try it.”.But he remains confident in its future viability as a staple crop, especially for biofuels. Companies like Imperial Oil are building bio reactors alongside their traditional refineries near Edmonton and are contracting large volumes of canola that would otherwise be used for food. American refiners are doing the same in response to low carbon fuel standards for diesel fuels and sustainable jet fuel..Greenfield estimates some 30 million additional acres will be needed to be planted to meet the existing demand for fuels. And that demand is only expected to grow exponentially..“We’re going to have to start looking at other crops to meet biofuel demand,” he said..Greenfield agrees Yield10 is a lot like a software tech company, and suggests its development model is the wave of the future. Unlike canola, which was developed with intense government support in the 1970s, governments have largely stepped back from that R&D role, leaving the field wide open for entrepreneurial startups. The value is in the intellectual property. Greenfield calls is “biological software.”."Although there is an excellent public breeding program, it’s not getting the funding it deserves,” he said. ”It's up to the private sector to step in and support the advancement of Camelina.”
