Protein Industries Canada receives funding for canola breeding project

Protein Industries Canada, along with industry partners, announced an investment of more than $27 million into a canola breeding project focused on making canola hybrids that produce high protein meal for downstream use. This is the first commercial breeding project focused specifically on protein quality improvement. Higher protein canola meal will result in new, diversified, higher-value markets for canola meal creating economic benefits across the entire value-chain.

“It is great to see the Protein Industries Supercluster build further momentum through new projects and even more investments. This project especially will help produce canola that commands premium value – both at home and in international markets. This will help growers become more profitable and create more jobs in the agri-food sector,” Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry said.

The consortium, led by Corteva Agriscience and includes Bunge, a canola processor, and Botaneco, will invest $14.05 million, with a $13.6 million investment from Protein Industries Canada. In this project, genetics from Corteva’s breeding programs and public sector sources, such as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, will identify genes that result in high protein and reduced fibre. High protein products delivered from breeding will be scaled up to provide seeds for processing by Bunge and Botaneco to generate meal and high value canola protein products, that are more competitive with other plant-based protein sources for human and monogastric markets, including poultry and pork.

Bunge will process the high protein canola, resulting in high protein meal to be used in poultry and swine feeding studies to quantify animal performance. New end-use markets will also be evaluated using the meal processed by Bunge. In parallel, high protein canola will be used in Botaneco’s novel processing platforms to produce protein concentrates for use in aquaculture studies, and protein isolates for human food testing.

Protein Industries Canada currently has 24 projects being evaluated for investment. The projects represent a potential investment of more than $130 million and include projects from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.