Oilseeds Subcommittee

The Oilseeds Subcommittee is responsible for oilseed crops such as flax, mustard seed and sunflower. The Subcommittee’s response to proposed changes to the variety development system highlighted key activity at the 2002 meeting.

Support for agronomic merit requirement

The Oilseeds Subcommittee strongly supported keeping agronomic merit as a requirement for registering sunflower, oilseed flax and mustard varieties. The decision was in response to the CFIA’s proposed changes to the variety registration system.

Under the CFIA proposal, these crops would fall under Schedule A i), which includes a merit requirement for quality and disease only. For agronomics, those supporting a line for registration would simply be required to provide evidence that a minimum of one year of agronomic data had been collected, for the purpose of making this information available to farmers and other interested parties.

In a related move, the subcommittee supported a motion in favour of the CFIA’s placement of fibre flax in Schedule A iii), which requires that a crop must undergo disease merit assessment and show evidence of collection of agronomic data.

CFIA’s placement of safflower and soybeans into Schedule B also met with the subcommittee’s approval. Schedule B requires evidence that agronomic, disease and quality performance data was collected, as appropriate. As well, the subcommittee voted to recommend that the responsibility for safflower and soybean crops be moved to another recommending committee — members felt they do not have the expertise to assess these crops.

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