STORY CONTACT: Jack Brown, (208) 885-7078, jbrown@uidaho.edu
MEDIA CONTACT: Bill Loftus, (208) 885-7694, bloftus@uidaho.edu

Editors please note: A color photo of Jack Brown in a yellow field of flowering canola is available electronically or by mail by contacting Bill Loftus. Cutline: University of Idaho photo

Jack Brown, left, and Bert Henriksen of Lewiston, examine experimental canola plants growing in a plot at Henriksen’s farm.

MOSCOW, Idaho —— University of Idaho plant breeder Jack Brown went back to basics in search of a new mustard. His project essentially recreated a natural cross between black mustard, which is a Mediterranean weed, and a turnip to produce Oriental mustard, an intensely spicy mustard valued as a condiment.

"It might have taken nature thousands of years for just the right conditions to occur for these two species to naturally produce a hybrid," Brown said. "We were able to resynthesize a winter-hardy form of this species in the laboratory, which had never been done before, in three years."

Brown undertook the quest to use one form of biotechnology to solve problems faced by commercial growers of canola, the oilseed that produces the vegetable oil popular with health-conscious consumers.

His goal was to create a modern hybrid species that combined the winter-hardiness of turnips produced for Scandinavian climates with the insect, disease and drought resistance of black mustard. Brown is an associate professor of plant breeding and genetics.

Winter-hardy canola has long been available to growers. But it lacks the toughness of both Oriental and yellow mustard, which are able to thrive in hot, dry areas and resist most insects and diseases. Canola is susceptible to various problems, but it produces lots of valuable oil. With all those benefits, mustard’s major drawback remains low oil content, and poor quality oil and seed meal.

Like canola, both parents belong to the Brassicaceae family, which also includes such familiar crops as cabbage, mustard, radishes, rapeseed and broccoli.

Using highly refined tissue culture methods Brown’s research team learned first to culture ovaries from the mustard. Applying turnip pollen directly, the researchers then rescued the two week-old embryos before the plant shut down the flow of nutrients to the new hybrids.

The embryos were then raised on a gelatin-like growth media in glass flasks, much as orchids are grown commercially. Plants were later transferred to pots in a glasshouse and manipulated to produce seeds that could be planted in the field.

Other work from Brown’s group has taken root commercially, too. They have developed a new yellow condiment mustard, ‘IdaGold’, tailored for Inland Northwest growers. With 60,000 pounds of seed available, enough to plant 10,000 acres, IdaGold will be distributed to farmers to grow commercially for the first time this year.

Wheat farmers in the Inland Northwest are eager to plant the new mustard as another rotation crop to break the cycles of insects and disease that can build in dryland areas where growers can alternate only between wheat and barley.

He is also working on a new variety of Oriental mustard, ‘Pacific Gold’, to supply a potential export market from the Pacific Rim. Unfortunately for farmers, Brown said, the markets for both now are relatively small. With IdaGold, total demand would account for only about 250,000 acres until export markets can be developed.

The market for oilseed crops is far larger. Brown wants to develop a winter-hardy mustard that could also draw on canola’s oil qualities, most notably the lack of glucosinolates, the compounds that make mustard pungent.

This summer’s harvest of experimental hybrids showed his initial breeding to produce a winter-hardy mustard was a success, Brown said.

The goal of winter mustard with canola-like oil will take a while longer. His new hybrids produce both a larger variety and quantity of glucosinolates. Both developments make Brown very happy.

Because each mustard, rapeseed and canola species generally produces a specific kind of the pungent compound, finding a hybrid that produces a combination is good news.

"We may be able use these lines to find the gene or genes responsible for producing these compounds, which no one has been able to do before," Brown said. With that, Brown’s opportunities as a plant breeder expand dramatically.

The discovery of mustard varieties with four times the level of glucosinolate compounds also holds commercial promise because glucosinolates in mustards can sterilize soils if concentrations are high enough.

Environmental regulators are targeting methyl bromide, the most widely used soil fumigant, because of the damage it inflicts on the ozone layer. The new mustard may give farmers dependent on methyl bromide a viable alternative.

One commercial rapeseed variety, ‘Humus,’ has already been introduced as a biological soil fumigant. Grown, then plowed into the soil, its vegetation breaks down to release toxic compounds. Growers, however, have hesitated because concentrations of its active compounds are relatively low, leaving it less effective than methyl bromide.

Still, the search for alternatives to synthetic soil fumigation already has led a Napa Valley vineyard and other commercial growers to employ the plant. Brown sees his new hybrids as offering a better alternative worth pursuing.