Despite disease and moisture challenges and a very difficult harvest, Canadian growers achieve an average canola yield of 42.3 bu/ac, moving us closer to our goal of 52 bu/ac by 2025.

The industry’s ambitious new goal is average yields of 52 bushels per acre by 2025. The new strategic plan called Keep It Coming 2025 focuses on generating more profit for farmers from every acre grown, while building canola’s value in key markets.

Seed developers launch a high-oleic canola oil with natural antioxidants and a new type of canola with high levels of Omega-9s.

View January 2012 Canola Digest article: Canola Demand Reaches New Heights   

The industry launches the Canola Market Access Plan (CMAP) to avoid trade disruptions in important export markets. CMAP builds on the Export Ready program (now called Keep it Clean) to improve grower understanding of export standards.

View 2010 Canola Digest, March 2010 article: Canola MAP 2015    

An era of processing expansion begins, with new plants and expansions underway at Nipawin, Clavet, Yorkton, Lloydminster and Becancoeur. Within a few years, capacity doubles to more than eight million tonnes, creating an important source of employment in rural communities.

The Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals opens at the University of Manitoba, with canola a major area of focus.

View 2006 Canola Digest: Focus on canola health claims at new centre

Canola’s value as a biodiesel and engine lubricity agent is demonstrated by studies at the University of Saskatchewan.

Using traditional breeding methods, the Saskatoon Research Centre develops two canola quality B. juncea varieties, Arid and Amulet, which are grown under contract. The varieties are adapted to the brown soil zone and have shatter-resistant pods suited to straight-combining.

View 2002 Canola Digest: How is juncea performing?

Innovative plant breeding by Gary Stringam at the University of Alberta results in Quantum, Canada’s first canola variety with high blackleg resistance and outstanding yields.

The blackleg resistant gene in Quantum makes a big impact on blackleg reduction and yield increases, and sparks more research focused on identification and utilization of other blackleg resistant genes.

The world’s first options trading market opens at the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange – now ICE Futures Canada – creating the major price discovery mechanism for worldwide canola trade. By now the crop is second only to wheat in terms of importance to the Canadian farm economy.

1991 Canola Digest – “Canola options to begin trading”

Hyola 40, the first hybrid canola variety, is registered for commercial production in Canada. It is quickly followed by the very popular hybrid Hyola 401 in 1991.

The same year, Dr. Peter McVetty releases HERO, the first canola cultivar with high erucic acid (HEAR) and low glucosinolates – an ideal composition for use as biodegradable lubricants and slip agents in industrial and household products. Dr. Robert Duncan will later take over the HEAR breeding program at University of Manitoba.

Puritan canola oil receives the American Health Foundation’s Health Product of the Year award. A few years later, it earns the American College of Nutrition’s first ever Product Acceptance Award.

View 1987 Canola Digest Puritan American Food Product of the Year

The U.S. provides Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status to canola oil, opening the door to one of the world’s biggest markets.

This huge step forward had been made possible by pioneering researchers Dr. Vivian Bruce and Dr. Bruce McDonald, who were the first to conduct eating trials with human subjects. They found that canola oil was as effective or more effective as other vegetable oils in lowering blood cholesterol.

The tireless commitment to canola by McDonald, Bruce and many other scientists contributed to canola’s acceptance around the world. Today canola oil is the #2 cooking oil in the U.S.

View 1985 Canola Digest No. 2

1985 also marked the Canola Council of Canada launches Grow with Canola — a five-year, multi-dimensional technology transfer program aimed at boosting average yields by 25 per cent by 1989. A core component of the program is the brand new Canola Growers Manual, researched and written by Phil Thomas, Alberta Agriculture’s oilseed specialist. The manual is a 175-page, 3-ring binder, “enabling updated information to be added on an ongoing basis.”

Thomas’ studies showed that farmers who were consistently achieving relatively high yields of 35-40 bushels per acre practiced an array of inter-related husbandry techniques in common with a fine sense of the personality of canola.

The manual evolved into a key canola resource still used today: www.canolaencyclopedia.ca.

The Rapeseed Association of Canada changes its name to the Canola Council of Canada (CCC) to acknowledge the development and acceptance of canola varieties.

View 1980 Rapeseed Digest No. 1

Canada’s new double-low varieties are truly a breed apart from rapeseed grown elsewhere in the world. To emphasize these superiorities, the industry adopts a new name for its product: “Canola.” “Can” for Canadian and “Ola” for oil. The term soon begins to appear in the food, feed and seed regulations in Canada and the U.S.

The official definition had been created with the help of Dr. James Daun of the Canadian Grain Commission, who had developed much better methods of measuring chlorophyll and glucosinolates. Later, he would also help expand the CGC harvest survey, which would aid the study of how growing environment impacts quality.

View 1978 Rapeseed Digest Vol. 12

An expert committee chooses Tower, a B. napus rapeseed developed by Dr. Baldur Stefansson, to be the first registered double-low variety. Dr. Keith Downey has a double-low line in trials at the same time, but Tower edges it out for first registration because of a slightly higher yield.

View 1974 Rapeseed Digest Vol. 03

A breakthrough comes when rapeseed samples from Poland are brought to the Saskatoon research branch by visiting scientist Dr. Jan Krzymanski. Among the samples is a B. napus variety testing very low for both glucosinolates and erucic acid. Dr. Keith Downey shares the samples with Dr. Baldur Stefansson.

By now, most of the Canadian rapeseed crop is grown from low-erucic seed. The Canadian industry agrees to voluntarily limit erucic acid content to 5% in food products.

View 1973 Rapeseed Digest Vol. 10

Growers, seed developers, processors and exporters form this forerunner of the Canola Council of Canada. It is the first industry association in Canada to encompass all links of the value chain. All parts of the industry sit down at the same table to build on the potential of Canada’s new low-erucic rapeseed varieties.

“The RAC is Born” – excerpt from “The First Six Years”

1967 Canola Digest vol. 2

September marks the start of rapeseed trading, hedging and daily price broadcasts on the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.

At about this time, scientists develop two innovations that greatly accelerate progress toward the goal of low-erucic-acid rapeseed. These two discoveries are a more efficient gas-liquid chromatography process for precise analysis of oil from a single seed, and the “half-seed” technique for more reliable reproduction of promising genotypes.

Innovations Accelerate Research

 Canola might not have been discovered without the aid of two plant breeding innovations developed by Canadian scientists in the late 1950s.

The first of these developments was a quick and accurate method to analyze the fatty acid content of oil using gas-liquid chromatography or GLC. The National Research Council purchased a GLC unit in 1957, and Dr. Burton Craig and Martin Mallard were soon busy tinkering with it to fit their needs. Their refinements made it possible to analyze the oil in a single seed.

At the University of Manitoba, Dr. Frithjof Hougen would build on these revolutionary methods for fatty acid profiling using first GLC and then nuclear magnetic resonance. Later, he would develop spectrophotometer assays to rapidly test for seed chlorophyll.

These great advances in oil composition analysis made it possible to take advantage of the second big innovation – the “half-seed technique” discovered by Keith Downey and his graduate student Bryan Harvey. They had determined that seeds from the same mother plant don’t necessarily have the same erucic acid content. Therefore, when looking for the best candidates for breeding, it would make sense to cut each canola seed in two – using one half to analyze the seed for oil composition, and then planting the other half if the oil analysis looked promising.

But in the 1950s, splitting a tiny canola seed was easier said than done. Harvey used an eye surgeon’s scalpel to carry out the delicate dissections, making sure to preserve the root and growing tip.

Amazingly, it worked. The plants grown from these seeds were scraggly, but they were productive.

Armed with the half-seed technique and GLC technology, researchers were able to greatly accelerate the development of low-erucic rapeseed varieties. These techniques were quickly adopted for a wide range of species around the globe.

Golden, a B. napus selection with improved oil content and lodging resistance is released by the Saskatoon research centre. Plant breeders in Saskatchewan and Manitoba continue to improve yield and resilience over the next 15 years, making rapeseed a reliable crop for the Prairies.

B. rapa is registered for Canadian production as Polish rapeseed based on production and distribution by the Solovoniuk family, the Polish immigrants who were the first to grow rapeseed in Canada.

To help the war effort, a small group of farmers is selected to grow B. napus for industrial oil at a guaranteed price of 6 cents a pound. The seed originates in Argentina – hence the B. napus species becomes known as Argentine rapeseed.

Over the next few years, it becomes clear that both the Argentine and Polish species of rapeseed can thrive under Western Canadian conditions.

After emigrating from Poland, the Solvoniuk family starts growing B. rapa rapeseed in the garden of their Shellbrook, Saskatchewan home. Because the seed has been brought from their homeland, B. rapa comes to be known as Polish rapeseed.

Fred & Olga Solvoniuk

In the late 1920s, Fred and Olga Solvoniuk emigrated from Poland to Shellbrook, Saskatchewan. They had with them a memento from their homeland – a small amount of rapeseed from the Brassica rapa species.

Some say the seed was carried over from Poland in a handkerchief…or perhaps in the seams of Fred’s clothes. Others say it was given to them by another Polish immigrant after the Solvoniuks arrived.

Whatever the source, the seed intrigued the farm family’s new neighbours. The Solvoniuks started planting it in their garden – at first growing just enough for their own use. Soon they were sharing tobacco cans of seed with other farmers in the area.

Because the seed originated in Poland, the plant came to be known as Polish rapeseed – a name still used for B. rapa varieties today.