University News for July 20, 2010

A University of Manitoba researcher says the desire to reduce crop input costs and the environmental impact of crop production and pursue niche markets are helping fuel increased interest in organic techniques.

The Ian N. Morrison Research Farm just west of Carman is operated by the University of Manitoba's Department of Plant Science with participation from Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives.

Two organic field tours are set for tomorrow afternoon at the research farm.

Joanne Thiessen Martens, a research technician with the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, recalls the organic program started around 2005.

Clip-Joanne Thiessen Martens-University of Manitoba:
We started there looking at crop rotations that could make organic systems work well and that would also provide us a land base in order to do organic research experiments.

Some of our key areas right now are looking at green manure crop management and looking at novel ways of including green manures and benefiting from green manures.

That includes grazing cover crops or grazing green manure crops.

It also includes terminating them using less tillage so using our crop roller to terminate green manures and then looking at some of the decomposition dynamics of that mulch that's left after rolling down a green manure crop.

We are also looking at some organic pulse crop production so soybeans and field beans.

Another major area is breeding cereal crops for use in organic systems or other low input systems.

Thiessen Martens suggests interest in organic crop production is being driven largely by the desire to reduce input costs by using methods that use less energy and fewer chemicals and practices used in organic can also be used on conventional farms.

For information or to register for the tours call 330-7409 or 474-6077.

For UniversityNews.Org, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

*University News is a presentation of the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural & Food Sciences