Quality Improvement through Plant Breeding

Simultaneously with the sowing of the first crop. Dr. W. j. White started a breeding program at the Federal Department of Agriculture Dominion Forage Crops Laboratory in Saskatoon, Dr. H. K. Sallans and Mr. G. D. Sinclair at the Prairie Regional Laboratory of the National Research Council at Saskatoon did the early work of quality evaluation on the oil in terms of iodine value, acid value, refractive index, and oil color. 

Under the incentive of a fixed government price and a severe oils and fat shortage, production and crushing of rapeseed increased steadily through the war years, but with the return to adequate supplies after the war, controls were phased out and producers and crushers were left to their own devices. 

In the immediate postwar period, the ready availability of the traditional edible oils such as cottonseed, peanut, and soybean caused the use of rape-seed oil in edible products in Canada to be dropped. However, the demand for industrial grade oil continued and in 1949 Mr. Ross was able to negotiate a substantial sale of oil but because of world market conditions, the 1949 crop returned producers only 3.65 cents per pound, and in 1950 the crop nearly disappeared. It might well have disappeared completely at this point if it had not been for the persistence of a relatively small group of people including Mr. Ross who continued to contract production and to find markets for oil, meal, and seed. Mr. Ross continued to supply Canadian rape-seed oil until 1959. 

Another advocate of rapeseed and rapeseed oil was Dr. Sal Ians, who pointed out on many occasions that the crop was well adapted to the Prairies, had the potential of replacing much of our imported vegetable oils, and could be essential in the case of national emergency. Dr. Sal Ians and his colleagues at the Prairie Regional Laboratory, Dr. B. M. Craig, Dr. L. R. Wetter and Dr. C. G. Youngs, did much to maintain interest in the crop and provided basic information on both oil and meal. 

At the Division of Applied Biology of the National Research Council in Ottawa, Dr. N. H. Grace, Dr. H. J. Lips, and Dr. A. Zuckerman were investigating the edible uses of rapeseed oil. They concluded that with careful refining, bleaching, hydrogenating, and deodorizing, rapeseed oil could be substituted for soybean oil in edible products without loss in quality. However, edible oil processors remained reluctant to use the oil. They felt that flavor stability was inferior to other oils available to them and because there was no firm market, seed production and oil supplies were erratic. 

---