SODC supports project that speeds up research  The Canadian Prairies may be in the deep freeze but it's a different story "down under". Work is being done there for the Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan, under the direction of Dr. Brian Rossnagel.
Using warm-climate regions such as New Zealand allows Dr. Rossnagel and fellow researchers to shortcut, somewhat, the length of time it takes to propogate new or experimental oat varieties. This year marks the first year in which Saskatchewan farmers are directly supporting oat
research at the CDC. The Saskatchewan Oat Development Commission has committed $100,000 per year over five years to support oat research at the CDC. The plots are located at the Southern Seed Technologies (SST) field station near Leeston which is just south of Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island. The area is know as the Canterbury Plains and is very similar to southern Manitoba in that it is rather flat and has a similar growing season. Materials are normally planted in mid to late October, harvested in February and delivered back to Saskatoon during late March. The pictures are of the larger plots of F2, F3 and F4 generation bulks from crosses made over the past couple of years at Saskatoon as well as some hill plots (clumps) of populations being grown out for some of molecular marker studies as well as the breeding program. All of this is about speeding the breeding process by growing two crops (in breeding terms thus two generations) in a single year or increasing seed stocks of new lines for more advanced testing at Saskatoon next summer. CDC has been using New Zealand for this purpose every year since 1986 and in reality it acts as a really large cost-effective off-season greenhouse. While someone occasionally goes down near harvest time in February if there is some special material growing at Leeston that needs to be carefully looked over, CDC normally do not go down under as the folks at SST are very skilled and provide excellent cost effective service.
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