By Lee Hart

Grainews staff

Don’t seed the farm to triticale from fencepost-to-fencepost yet, but ongoing research could launch this long-time background cereal into a major player in the biofuel, chemical and bio-materials industry.

That’s the forecast of a government funded project called the Canadian Triticale Biorefinery Initiative (CTBI), which over the next 10 years will work with plant breeders and industry to extract all the potential it can out of triticale.

While there is plenty of research and development to be done not only to produce improved varieties, but also processing technology and new markets, CTBI is predicting as much as three million acres of triticale to be in profitable production by 2015.

Farmers attending the 2008 FarmTech Conference in Edmonton learned there is more to triticale than just a feed or milling grain or a highly productive crop that makes good silage for cattle.

One initial CTBI project , working with a private company Pure Vision Technology Inc. showed that triticale straw has many possibilities. During a 10-month project in 2007, PureVision’s biomass fractionation technology was used to process triticale straw into sugars, cellulose and lignin.

CTBI’s George Pan says the work successfully demonstrated the fractionation process is a very economical means  of processing triticale straw to produce a solid stream of purified cellulose for ethanol production or pulp products. The process also produced two liquid streams with the first stage liquor containing most of hemicellulosic sugars and the second stage liquor containing low molecular weight lignin, which are both valuable co-products.

 This is just a small example of the products that can be extracted from not only the grain, but the crop biomass itself.

Richard Gibson with the Alberta Research Council says triticale has great promise due to its inherent potential for seed and straw biomass production. 

The crop, which is a cross between durum wheat and rye, has both winter and spring types, and has great adaptability to handle environmental stress giving it excellent potential over a wide range of Prairie soil types and growing conditions.

Over the next 10 years CTBI activities will span the entire science, technology and commercialization continuum, says Gibson.

Specific projects will focus on molecular biology, genetic engineering, plant breeding, sustainable production, biosafety, biorefinery engineering, and  polymer science. The initiative will also look at attracting investment to the triticale industry and at building value chains.

Within seven years CTBI is expecting annual Canadian triticale grain production to reach 4.5 million tonnes, which will supply 10-world scale biorefineries; and some three million tonnes of triticale straw  will be processed to make renewable fuels, chemicals and biomaterials.