Each year, Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation (MASC) publishes a Variety Market Share Report based on information provided by Manitoba Farmers. Not only is this information valuable to track trends and patterns, it can also be useful to farmers for marketing and cropping decisions.

In the 2022 edition, Manitoba farmers reported seeding 51,972 acres of winter wheat in the fall of 2021, up by about 15,000 acres from the previous year. Emerson was the most popular variety, seeded on 36 per cent of acres, followed by AAC Wildfire (28 per cent) and AAC Gateway (16 per cent) (Figure 1).


Figure 1: Most popular winter wheat varieties in Manitoba, based on the MASC 2022 Variety Market Share Report.

How have winter wheat varieties changed over time?

It is no surprise that winter wheat breeders are continually working to improve the varieties available to farmers, but how do past varieties stack up against new genetics?

With a short height and high yield, CDC Falcon was the long-standing favourite variety in Manitoba. In 2014, it was moved out of the Canada Western Red Winter class and into the Canada Western Special Purpose class.

Registered in 2012, Emerson has been a top variety in Manitoba in recent years, in part due to its Fusarium head blight (FHB) resistance. AAC Wildfire (registered 2015), AAC Gateway (registered 2012) and AAC Goldrush (registered 2016) are also popular varieties. See how they compare to one another in Table 1!

Table 1: CDC Falcon Canada Western Special Purpose winter wheat compared to popular Canada Western Red Winter wheat varieties in Manitoba. Variety descriptions are based on the Seed Manitoba 2022 Variety Selection Guide.

For more information, the entire market share report can be found here. The Manitoba Management Plus Program (MMPP) also has a number of Regional Analysis Tools, including the Variety Yield Data Browser, which allows past variety yield data for many crops to be filtered based on municipality or MASC risk area.