The East Central Research Foundation farm near Yorkton has taken part in a trial on cadmium accumulation in flax. 

South Korea won’t accept flax due to unacceptably high levels of cadmium.

Ishita Patel was the project leader.  She’s based at the South East Research Farm at Redvers.

“As a solution to this issue, perhaps producers could consider using phosphate sources other than MAP. An option could be struvite which is purified from waste water, but cadmium testing is still enouraged.”

“Secondly, we found that zinc and calcium applcitiosn did not signifiaclt y reudced the cadmium content compared to the control at any of the sites and a results these trteamnts wrr not found to be economicall beneficial.”

“We had high variability in the data in 2022, but we will be doing the trials again in 2023, and hope that the variabilty will be low enough to get some statistically significant results.”

The trials were conducted at Yorkton, Redvers, Indian Head, and Scott.