DEVELOPERS of a new line of safflower with high levels of oleic acid in the oil, desired by both the industrial and food services sectors, are confident the varieties will see a resurgence in Australia’s safflower industry, which has declined since its 1980s heyday.
Next year GO Resources will commercialise its first super high oleic safflower (SHOS) line, developed by CSIRO with the support of the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC).
The long-running trial process has drawn to a close and has been a success, with the initial super high oleic variety available to farmers a year earlier than first thought.
Surya Kant, an Agriculture Victoria senior research scientist who is working on the development of second and third generation super high oleic safflower lines for GO Resources, said the quality attributes of the product was attracting interest.
The oil from the SHOS lines is primarily geared towards industrial use, although there is also potential in the food grade oils industry.
Oils extracted from SHOS varieties replicates the use of synthetic oils and lubricants used in industrial applications.
Because of its profile the oil which includes elevated levels of oleic acid and zero presence of linolenic acid which is present in all other vegetable based oils it requires few additions before it can be used industrially when compared to alternate sources including palm oil and high oleic sunflower oil.
With this in mind, combined with potential in food services, Dr Kant said he felt there would be good demand for super high oleic safflower.
“There should be a good premium over other oilseed crops and it provides a point of difference agronomically, especially due to its increased tolerance of sodic soils when compared to many other crops grown in farmers’ cereal rotations.”
The super high oleic safflower is a different beast to the safflower commonly grown before canola came onto the scene.
During the 80s and 90s safflower was traditionally planted as a spring / summer crop, however Dr Kant said SHOS trials had been done treating the crop as an early sown winter crop, planted in mid-May to early-June.
“It is a very hardy crop and can cope with the hotter weather which is why it was often planted later, but it is working well being sown early in the winter cropping program,” he said.
In terms of the technology used to develop the varieties, the SHOS lines have been developed using CSIRO’s proprietary RNA interference (RNAi) technology also known as gene silencing as part of the Crop Biofactories project.
The super high oleic safflower shows signs of being versatile in terms of adaptation over different climatic zones.
Aside from trial work in the Wimmera in Victoria, where Dr Kant is based, there has been work undertaken through northern NSW and the Riverina.
However, the safflower’s climatic scope may well end up breaking out of traditional broadacre cropping regions, with promising trials on the Atherton Tablelands in northern Queensland and at Kununurra in tropical north west Western Australia.
Once the varieties go commercial GO Resources expects the plant will find a fit in crop rotations from the Queensland / NSW border all the way down to Victoria’s Western District.
Trial yields have been good, ranging from 1.0 to 1.5 tonnes a hectare in dryland conditions to 3t/ha on irrigation.
This means average yields are slightly lower than canola, the other major oilseed crop grown in Australia, however GO Resources expects the SHOS lines will command a premium over canola, due to the demand for the high oleic oil. In the mid to long term yields will improve as new ‘elite’ lines of super high oleic safflower are released from their accelerated breeding program
In terms of its oleic acid profile, in trials the oil measured at approximately 92pc, markedly above the nearest rivals in the mid 70s.
Dr Kant said it would also be valuable agronomically, to allow farmers to rotate chemical groups, while its long tap root has been prized for its ability to break up hard pans in soils and for general soil amelioration.