Canola For New Growing Regions

InVigor Gold is a yellow-seeded canola variety with a long history of development. Stuart Brandt, head of breeding for wheat and canola with BASF, explains the breeding process that dates back to 1977 and that has helped to shape the canola that we know today.

“It began with acquiring germplasm, developing germplasm, and trying to figure out what the geographic fit would be for Brassica genesia, or what we're calling Invigor Gold, for farmers, realizing that it had some characteristics. For example, it had better pod shatter tolerance than napus at that time, it had better heat tolerance than than napus in and it was very it was much better in growing conditions where there was low organic matter soils.”

Stewart explains how there were some struggles along the way.

“We had to redevelop some processes. For example, our double haploid process. We had to go to a different and alternate hybridization system, because the hybridization system we were using for our brassica napist program didn't work properly in Braska gensea, so it just made a couple things right off the start that we had to rethink things and try to look at things a different way.”

The research also explored proper seeding rates, fertilizer needs, and strategies to increase the seed size and plant density. These insights helped identify which growers are best positioned to benefit from InVigor Gold.