Farmscape for April 16, 2009   (Episode 3158)

The Chairman of Manitoba Pork Council says, with the introduction of new provincial restrictions on the application of phosphorus, the timing of the introduction of a new low phytate barley couldn't be better.

CDC Lophy-I, a hulless barley developed at the Crop Development Centre in Saskatoon, has been released as a public variety to encourage multiplication of seed stock.

The variety is low in phytate phosphorus which is difficult for the pig to digest so the bulk of it ends up in the manure.

Manitoba Pork Council chairman Karl Kynoch says, with new provincial phosphorus application limits, the introduction of this new variety is positive.

Clip-Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council

There's one part of the province down in the southeastern corner where there is a lot of phosphorus, not just from hogs but from all livestock, so this would be a very good potential for some of the people in that corner to be able to use to be able to reduce the phosphorus in the manure, maybe save some hauling cost on that.

Anything you can do to reduce it really helps the distance you've got to haul the manure, it reduces the amount of acres that you need to spread it on.

With today's environmental regulations coming forward and all of the talk from government on wanting to reduce phosphorus in some areas, this could be really positive going forward, just depending on yields and that.

We're really going to be looking forward to seeing how this turns out and getting some more results coming off the pig and see if it actually reduces the phosphorus in the lagoons.

I would imagine some of the producers will really be looking forward to being able to try this, see what kinds of yields are coming off of this variety and also what levels of DON and that down the road.

There's other things we look at, standability or lodgability but that will take some time to be seen and, if this is really good at reducing phosphorus, we can always breed in some more traits to it also.

Kynoch hopes the release of Lophy-I will inspire the development of additional varieties of low phytate barley.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council