Prairie farmers may now be able to compare new seed varieties “head-to-head” with results for their farm, using a new website with data from seed registration trials.
The new Provincial Registration Trials (PVT) website gives farmers online access to post-registration variety data from all of the western Canadian provinces, the Western Grains Research Foundation said in a release Friday.
“The results are available in a standardized form so that producers and other key audiences can use this data in making educated variety decisions,” the WGRF said.
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“Starting only with Canadian Western Red Spring (CWRS) wheat, producers will be able to see the potential value of bringing all of this information into one centralized location.”
The WGRF’s goal is to eventually post data on all crop types on the site.
Even in its early stages, however, the WGRF considers the online PVT database “a major breakthrough in obtaining co-operation between the provinces, leading towards a unified western Canadian Post-registration Variety Testing (PVT) system.”
The PVT website for now will give producers a better idea of how a particular variety behaves overall in Western Canada, leading to better variety selection, the foundation said.
The website project was initiated by the Agricultural Research and Extension Council of Alberta (ARECA) with grants from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the WGRF, plus other federal and provincial funding agencies. A steering committee with representatives from each of the western Canadian provinces was formed in May 2008, to steer the site’s development.
