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PLANT HEALTH
Little-known safflower transformed into world-first cash crop by Aussie scientists Safflower was once a widely-grown crop in Australia, used for margarine production and birdseed. But when the market collapsed a few decades ago, the plant declined in popularity to the point where as little as 10,000 hectares were planted nationally. But, thanks to an innovative ‘gene-silencing’ process developed by CSIRO, a new strain of the plant known as super-high oleic safflower is poised to become an extremely profitable oilseed.
FROM LOW-VALUE TACTICAL CROP TO VALUABLE SEEDS Safflower is a yellow, thistle-like plant that has historically been used as a seed oil, birdseed and even as a substitute for saffron in cooking. It is an extremely hardy crop that can be grown in a very wide range of environments in Australia, from Kununurra in the northwest to the Grampians in the southeast and many points in between. It’s an ideal plant for crop rotation given its deep tap- root enables it to access sub-soil water. It is also drought resistant and has a wide summer planting window of five to six months.
silencing, enable the plant to produce a super-high oleic oil that has extensive uses world- wide as a high-grade indus- trial oil with an unprecedented purity level. SILENCING THE GENE In partnership with the Grains Research and Development Cor- poration (GRDC), CSIRO had been trying to develop a new high value oil crop for Australian farming for at least 15 years. In 2011, the sci- entists settled on safflower as that crop given its durability and unique – and untapped – oil pro- duction properties.
Despite these unique prop- erties, the seed’s low value and poor market return has led to inconsistent production in Australia. It is largely used as a break crop in the rotation for its agronomic benefits – the long taproot aerates soil and breaks hard pans, while the planting window allows for flexible sow- ing after cereals, cotton and canola. But this is set to change in the near future, thanks to the hard work of CSIRO scientists in identifying safflower’s unique genetic properties. These prop- erties, once modified by gene
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