Canadian Researchers Isolate Canola Lines with Increased Protein and Lower Fiber

Canola is second only to soy as the world’s top oilseed crop. But canola meal is typically only suitable as dairy cattle feed due to its low protein content and elevated levels of fiber that other animals cannot digest.

For three years, a National Research Council of Canada team at the Aquatic and Crop Resource Development

Research Center has partnered with Corteva Agriscience to modify the plant’s DNA through conventional mutation breeding, or mutagenesis. Two methods to induce genetic modifications were used to create different traits: a process that uses a chemical to effect the changes, or chemical mutagenesis, and another that uses radiation called physical mutagenesis.

NRC researchers produced more than 7,000 mutagenized canola lines that Corteva planted in the field, collecting the seeds and analyzing them for various traits, isolating more than 50 lines with increased protein, reduced fiber, and reductions in anti-nutritional factors.

Canola is one of Canada’s top crops, generating $30 billion in economic impact each year, and any improvement in the crop would have an outsized effect on the entire value chain, including growers, processors, seed developers, and exporters.

Another company, Botaneco, is also using a novel processing approach to generate a canola-derived protein concentrate for high-value species like shrimp or salmon. As opposed to conventional processing that denatures the seed’s proteins and destroys oleosomes, Botaneco’s water-based manufacturing platform unlocks new value for the crop by disassembling the seed, leading the oleosomes and proteins separate and intact.

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