Perennial grain crops could be a possibility for producers on the prairies in the next 15 to 20 years.

Doug Cattani is a perennial crop breeder with the University of Manitoba, and says they've been developing crops that would regrow each year in prairie conditions. Cattani says so far intermediate wheatgrass has been the most successful perennial crop because it`s adjusted to the Manitoba climate.

"It has successfully over-wintered and produced more than one grain crop. Any of the perennial wheat that have been tried, have all died after the first harvest. So it's acted more like a winter wheat than a perennial wheat," says Cattani.

He also says perennial cereal rye was more successful than wheat, but either survived only one or two harvests, or became very weak.

However it's not the winter that the plants can't handle, it's the spring.

"We get what we call a nice spring here, an early snow melt, and then two, three, four weeks of reasonable growing weather, and then a fairly severe frost... that usually either kills some plants, or greatly reduces the amount of reproductive effort or seed production that we see," he says.

He says perennial grain crops would help farmers by preventing soil erosion and adding organic matter to the soil. The perennial wheatgrass crops so far have produced very low gluten content, and they estimate yields of 1500 to 2000 kg per hectare.