Woburn, Massachusetts, USA
August 4, 2020
Yield10 Bioscience winter camelina field test, May 2020 Saskatchewan, Canada.
Yield10 Bioscience, Inc. (Nasdaq:YTEN), an agricultural bioscience company, today announced that it conducted field testing during the 2019/2020 winter season to evaluate emergence of winter Camelina sativa varieties. Yield10 is developing double haploid lines as a foundation for Camelina development and breeding for crossing in new performance traits. The testing of these winter varieties is part of Yield10’s development of Camelina sativa in the medium term for use at commercial scale as a cash cover crop for North America. Cover crops are becoming increasingly important to improve the sustainability of food production and maybe an ideal way for farmers to open up large areas for new crops producing novel products by complementing and not competing for acres with major food and feed crops while increasing farm revenue.
Two wild-type and two double haploid winter Camelina lines developed in-house by Yield10’s Canadian subsidiary, Metabolix Oilseeds, were studied in the field test. The winter Camelina plantings were conducted in August and September 2019 in Saskatchewan, Canada. Emergence of the seedlings after planting was in the range of 70-80% and 90-100%, respectively, depending on the date of planting. The field test site was snow covered from late October 2019 to mid-April 2020, and optimal spring emergence of the Camelina lines was observed in May 2020. Harvest of seed is expected in the third quarter of 2020 and seed generated in the study will be available for further planting and evaluation.
“Our team has developed new double haploid winter Camelina varieties which performed very well in our winter field trial under the extreme winter conditions encountered in Saskatchewan,” said Kristi Snell, Ph.D., Chief Science Officer of Yield10 Bioscience. “As development of our novel performance traits progresses, we envision deploying our traits in double haploid varieties of both winter and spring Camelina. Having this germplasm foundation will enable us to combine our proprietary traits in both Camelina varieties, expanding acreage potential for the crop. Double haploid Camelina lines have more uniform, stable performance, which is an important attribute for growers of commercial crops.”
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