Australian know how the secret sauce in new canola hybrids

DG Buller G, a Dyna-Gro canola hybrid with OptimumÒ GLY, an advanced herbicide-tolerant trait technology, goes on sale in December after exceeding yield and disease-resistance expectations during production and trials in Australia over the current season.

Nutrien Ag Solutions and Dyna-Gro senior canola breeder and research and development manager, Kate Light, said the early-mid maturity hybrid will suit most regions, except low rainfall zones. Regions with canola yield ranges of 1.5 tonnes per hectare to 4t/ha are ideal for the new hybrid.

“It’s a very versatile and adaptable variety. If the season shuts down it will finish off for you, but also it will continue on growing if the season is a good one,” she said.

Ms Light led the development of the line following successful, local trials, drawing on her knowledge of genetics, agronomic performance, plant pathology, molecular biology, disease resistance and biometrics when selecting Australian-adapted parent material for the hybrid.

Nutrien’s canola breeding program stretches globally, with colleagues in Saskatoon, Canada, undertaking initial generation of the parent lines and hybrid for DG Buller G under Ms Light’s direction. The Australian-led approach to each stage of the selection process for the parental and hybrid means that Dyna-Gro has been able to ensure adaption to local conditions. Following selection, the parent seed was sent to southern Chile for increasing under closed tent production during the 2023/24 summer. 

“A new canola hybrid like DG Buller G is literally years in the making. One in 2000 different combinations might become commercially viable,” Ms Light said.

“While DG Buller G was developed by Australians, if it wasn’t for our international teammates we wouldn’t be able to complete all the steps required to ensure we have Australian-adapted hybrids available for Australian farmers.

“We started with just a few grams of seed this time last year that was sent to Chile, which then gave us access to a few kilograms of parent seed for hybrid production here in Australia after clearing quarantine at the start of the year.

“The results have been exceptional. Yield, disease resistance, maturity, adaptation; we haven’t had anything that’s worried us.”

Performance ratings

DG Buller G and the Optimum® GLY herbicide-tolerant canola hybrids (glyphosate-tolerant) provides canola farmers with greater control and improved flexibility around herbicide spray rates and timing.

“You can spray DG Buller G canola, which contains the Optimum GLY herbicide tolerance trait, with glyphosate products labelled for Optimum GLY hybrids in-crop from emergence through to first flower stage. This extends the application window by 10-14 days,” Ms Light said.

DG Buller G is expected to rate R for blackleg resistance and has Group H resistance. An official blackleg rating will confirm these expectations once data becomes available.

Independent yield performance data is pending this year’s National Variety Trials (NVT) data to be released in March.

“The internal yield data we have is extremely pleasing and superior to any of Nutrien Ag Solutions’  existing Dyna-Gro glyphosate-tolerant varieties on the market,” Ms Light said.

Local production bolsters supply

After clearing quarantine, the hybrid seed production process was undertaken by Wayne and Brodie Williams, Kenlock Cropping, Griffith, NSW, under the direction of Frontier Seeds manager David Thomson and his daughter and production manager, Hilary.

Their expertise was critical to quality control and maximising the hybrid seed available at the end of season from the limited supply of the parent lines.

“We started the hybrid production with just 32 kilograms of parent seed and we stretched that as far as we could by using a precision planter to achieve near 100 per cent germination and a plant population of 190,000 per hectare,” Mr Thomson said.

The crop was sown five weeks later than normal in late May to ensure the availability of bees for the critical pollination process and to avoid cross-pollination from any commercial canola varieties in the region.

“Our role is to set up the planting configurations for the right depth, row spacing, and the right balance of male and female plants,” Mr Thomson said. “The days to flowering for the male parent is four days quicker than the female so we trimmed one side of the male plants to delay their flowering to align with the females – it worked out perfectly.”

This level of attention to detail is critical to the pollination process, with bee hives brought it to take pollen from the male flowers to the female, resulting in a hybrid progeny seed which is collected from the female plants.

Ms Light said there had been a recent resurgence in interest in hybrid breeding and production methods as a result of the rapid expansion of the canola industry in Australia and the resultant pressure to deliver greater volumes of seed to support growth.

During the hybrid seed production process, both male and female parent lines are planted, with the male line terminated after pollination and destroyed. This is to ensure any seed set by the male, which does not carry the glyphosate-tolerant genes, does not contaminate the hybrid seed set by the glyphosate-tolerant female parent.

“If you harvest the male seed you end up with two different types of seed in together which will fail seed quality testing. We need to ensure that DG Buller G supplies are completely pure and true to type.”