Winter Canola Production ; TransitionTo Row Cropping.

Winter Canola production in the United States has enormous potential to provide growers with a profitable rotational crop. Efforts to commercialize winter canola first began in the late 1980’s but these invariably failed due to un-adapted genetics, diseases and management practices. This presentation focuses on commercial agronomic programs, designed in recent years that are helping to build confidence in this crop with both growers and processors. Production of winter canola as a row crop has revolutionized the perception of this crop at the grower level. The ability to target more precise plant populations, enhance spatial distribution of plants, perform zero till establishment in previous crop residues and permit banding of macro and micronutrients have translated into uniform stand development of better structured plants that cope with environmental stress factors such as periods of cold weather, drought and high humidity. Commercial yields obtained by US growers that have adopted these practices in recent years are typically double the North American average for this crop and compare or exceed yield achieved in Western Europe where the records for highest yields have been held for many years.