WHAT WAS ONCE all but unheard of in Manitoba, is now found all over the province and has moved well beyond it in a seemingly unstoppable westward domination of Canadian fields? The answer is soybeans, and they are marching west from Manitoba to Alberta, with researchers working hard to create new varieties. “Canada has a history of soybean expansion West and northward,” said Elroy Cober, who has worked at the AAFC Ottawa Research and Development Centre as a soybean breeder since 1996. “Starting from two counties in southern Ontario, we have seen expansion through Ontario, Quebec and now Manitoba. Who knows how much soybean can expand in Saskatchewan and Alberta? As far as breeding for these regions is concerned, we have to balance between too dry in the Palliser Triangle and too short a season as we move north.” Tom Warkentin, who breeds field pea cultivars with emphasis on agronomic traits, disease resistance, and end-use quality, says there’s interest there on the research side and on the part of some growers. “Right now the acreage is small. It should be a good fit in the irrigation district where you can rule out drought, but it would mean a compromise between picking soybeans over some of the higher value crops that are grown there,” Warkentin says. According to Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, soybeans are sometimes referred to as “short-day plants”, as they flower in response to shortened day length. Latitude greatly affects day length, so geography plays a very important role in the production of soybeans. Because of this, each variety has a very narrow north-south range of adaptation, usually no wider than 150- 250 kilometers. Varieties grown south Once considered an eastern crop, soybeans have been migrating west across the Prairies to become an important crop for producers. Soybeans on the Prairies New Crops of their maturity band will mature earlier than normal, resulting in reduced yield. Varieties grown further north than their maturity band will mature later and be at a greater risk of a killing frost. If a season- ending freeze hits soybeans before they reach physiological maturity, both yield and quality will be affected. “In general soybeans are a long-season crop, so that’s obviously a factor here on the Prairies,” says Warkentin. “It’s somewhat drought susceptible. In some ways the seed is expensive, which can be an issue for some.” Soybeans Heading West To find out exactly how much acreage has expanded, how the development of locally-adapted varieties is going and where the future of soybeans in the West is headed, Glenda Clezy, an agronomy specialist at the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers (SPG), broke down the numbers. Clezy says it was around 2012 that the crop really started to increase significantly in acreage in Western Canada. She points to Statistics Canada data shows a strong jump in acreage in Manitoba from last year to this year (2.3 million acres in 2017 up from about 1.6 million in 2016), and a tremendous leap over the same time period in Saskatchewan (850,000 in 2017, more than three-and-a-half times the 240,000 acres grown in 2016). Alberta is not currently included in the data due to low acreage, nor in Statistics Canada’s June 2017 crop report, which states that Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec and Saskatchewan account for 99 per cent of national total soybean production, and that all of these provinces reached record high soybean acreages this year. “The number of varieties available to growers is on the rise as well,” Clezy explains, “and is likely a key factor in the increase in acres as more varieties are available that are shorter-season Elroy Cober Tom Warkentin 118 www.seed.ab.ca | Advancing Seed in Alberta