News > Day One > Healthy potential for a new medicinal crop Rhodiola rosea sounds like a lucrative new crop in Alberta that may not be a flash in the pan.

With 140 growers from the U.S. border to Alberta's Peace River Region, a grower association, a processing plant, and a well-established market, the crop, which takes four years to grow before harvest, may be a diversification opportunity for commercial grain farmers, says Peter Haberli, who's chairman of the grower association and a producer.

Peter Haberli displays a typical Rhodiola rosea plant (l) and a harvested root ball (r). -- Lee Hart photo

"It is relatively easy to grow, does not require specialized equipment unless produced on a large scale, and there appears to be a stable market that is willing to take more than 10 times what we can produce now," says Haberli, who produces the crop on his acreage at St. Albert, just west of Edmonton.

The Alberta Rhodiola Rosea Growers Association (ARRGO) is promoting the crop at the annual Farm Tech conference being held in Edmonton, this week.

There are some production costs involved, says Haberli, but the crop does provide a decent return. Growers this year, for example, were able to sell the roots from 20,000 plants (roughly one acre) for about $24,000 gross return.

The dry roots of the Rhodiola rosea -- also known as golden root, arctic root and rose root -- are dried, sliced and processed to produce performance-enhancing compounds available in human health products to help stimulate the nervous system, reduce depression, enhance work performance, improve cognition and memory function, eliminate fatigue, and prevent high altitude sickness. Compounds in the plant help the body to resist stress, and it also contains a range of antioxidant compounds.

A perennial plant is found in the cool temperature and sub-Arctic areas of the northern hemisphere, in parts of Eastern Europe, Asia, Russia and southern Siberia, and there are various species of the plant that do grow in Canada. It is only the Rhodiola rosea species that has the full range of human health benefits, and with natural or native stands of the plant disappearing, the health food industry is looking for cultivated production of R. rosea to meet its need.

ARRGO plans to offer more membership shares in the organization in February 2010 for $500 per share, along with delivery rights -- for the right to use the processing facility -- at a cost of $375 per 100 kilograms of dried product (which is roughly 1,000 plants).

With plant plugs planted by hand or with horticultural equipment in rows, the crop grows to about one foot tall, and after four years the root mass has developed sufficiently to be harvested. A potato harvester works well for harvesting the crop.

The Alberta organization, the only R. rosea grower group in the Americas, is limited under the terms of its legal incorporation to produce the crop within Alberta. But the group plans to meet with interested growers in western Saskatchwan and northeastern B.C. to discuss future opportunities.

Farmers looking for more information on the ARRGO and the crop can visit the group's website.

-- Lee Hart is a field editor for Grainews in Calgary.