Canola in Rotation

Dr. James Radtke is Senior Vice President of Product Development for Cibus. This high-tech agricultural company has developed what they call a non-transgenic SU canola? He tells me that non-transgenic is a natural way of altering the DNA in plant species and is absolutely not a GMO. SU Canola was developed using the Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS™), Cibus’ proprietary technology for non-transgenic breeding, which enables site-specific edits of native genes with no introduction of foreign DNA. All of that said, and really having nothing to do with non-transgenic, Dr. Radtke believes that canola in general is a very good crop for rotation. “The nice thing about canola is that the root system is a fairly deep tap root system. It tends to break up the soil a little bit. There have been a number of studies out that if you grow canola before your wheat crop, for example, the subsequent wheat crop will actually be better. So it fits nicely into a rotation and favorably works with other crops that follow it. You are saying that because of the taproot system, the soil becomes less compacted? It breaks the soil up and bring some nutrients and allows the wheat to penetrate into that soil a little more effectively.