Many farmers are bewildered when they try to decide which variety of canola to grow. Canola News will try to help narrow down the broad range of varieties. The following is a process which you can go through in order to narrow the number of varieties to those that fit your farm and farming practices. The important first step is to decide which sources of variety trial information you want to consider. There are independent sources such as the provincial variety trials and the Canola Council of Canada variety trials.
Many companies also do local variety trials.
It is best to look at a number of different sources of information. The next step is to determine what canola characteristics are important to you and your farming operation and rank them in terms of importance. But decisions should not be made on yield alone. Other characteristics such as disease resistance, maturity, standability, swathability, harvestability, green seed, seed cost, herbicide resistance etc. must be ranked in terms of order. Minimum acceptable standard for each characteristic must be established.