Growing season weather impacts on canola (Brassica napus) quality in western Canada

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Oil is the most valuable value-added product of canola and the quality of canola oil is a significant factor in the determination of that value. A earlier review found several environmental and agronomic factors that impacted on the oil content and concluded that recent variations in oil content, chlorophyll and fatty acid composition of canola oil are due mostly to meteorological conditions and that further analysis of meteorological impacts on canola quality would be useful. This study takes advantage of several existing databases with the objective to quantify the effects of growing season weather on canola quality for the purpose of canola quality prediction prior to harvest. These databases include the Canadian Grain Commission harvest survey and a number of weather databases from stations located across western Canada. Daily weather conditions will be reconstructed from the weather databases for the locations of specific samples in the harvest survey database. The daily weather at each sample location will facilitate the calculation of a suite of weather-based parameters to characterize the precipitation regime as well as heat and water stress. These will be used as independent variables in statistical analysis to determine relationships between specific weather conditions at specific times during the growing season to various canola quality parameters provided by the harvest survey. The equations generated in this analysis will be available for testing to determine their reliability for predicting canola quality of future crops based on growing season weather and prior to the availability of results from the harvest survey. A prediction of canola quality has significant value to the industry because it allows time to determine the most appropriate logistics for sourcing canola with the needed quality specifications to meet the demands of specific customers. The more efficiently this can be done, the more money that flows into the grain industry in western Canada.