Growing canola is a real challenge, and the yield can vary wildly!

I have a friend that averaged 4,500 lbs/ acre last year on 2,000 acres. With an average oil yield of 37% by weight. That's about 231.25 gallons per acre. The University of Idaho has developed a new strain of canola that produces 52% oil/ pound of seed. This new strain would produce approx 325 gallons/ acre at the same 4,500 lbs/acre yield.

My friend Ted found out that pre-irrigating the field before planting, then irrigating in the spring produces between 2,500 to 3,000 lbs of seed per acre, BUT by pre-irrigating then applying NO spring irrigation the yield increases above 4,000 lbs per acre. The U of I test plots show the same results! Prof VonGerpin told me that canola is basically a desert plant, and spring irrigation just produces more vegetative growth with a smaller yield, but by "stressing" the canola plant with no spring irrigation you get less vegetative growth but more seed production. We're on a learning curve here and more experimenting is necessary to increase our knowledge of the canola plant.

Becky is right tho........we'll never be able to generate the amounts of oil that "normal" oil fields produce. But they are running out of oil reserves........we can always plant more oil-seed crops