"It is a big deal because it's the introduction of a new species," said Joanne Buth, vice-president of the Canola Council of Canada.

Canada is the world's largest producer and exporter of canola, a variant of rapeseed. Annually, the industry generates about C$2 billion ($1.3 billion). The seed, which is grown primarily in western Canada, is crushed into cooking oil and meal for livestock feed.

Up until now, canola had two species, early maturing Brassica rapa, or Polish canola, and Brassica napus, or Argentine canola, which now dominates canola growing regions of the world.

"There's been a tremendous reduction in the amount of Polish canola grown because growers have been able to seed earlier and therefore use the Argentine varieties," said Buth.

"Something like a new species being introduced, this is an event that doesn't happen very often, obviously."

In the 1980s, scientists at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada began developing Brassica juncea, which is derived from mustard plants and converted to canola by lowering the erucic acid and glucosinolate levels.

The new varieties are not genetically modified. They are also low in saturated fat and have resistance to blackleg, a serious canola disease.

SaskPool and Agriculture Canada said the new crop expands the range of land suitable for canola cultivation to include farmers in the Palliser Triangle, a large swathe in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan and southeast Alberta where soils are less fertile and precipitation tends to be lower than in other areas of the Prairies.

Estimated yields of the new varieties in this brown soil zone are between 15 and 25 bushels per acre, SaskPool said.

Arid and Amulet will be available for seeding this spring.

"This year obviously the timing is very tight. A number of farmers will have already made cropping plans and have already started in the field," Monte Kesslering, manager of SaskPool's seed business unit told Reuters.

"We're expecting somewhere up to 100,000 acres to get planted this spring. In the future, I think it's quite conceivable that there'll be a million acres worth of this crop in the target area," said Kesslering.

Canadian farmers seeded 9.78 million acres (3.957 million hectares) of canola in 2001-02, producing about 5 million tonnes of the oilseed.

The launch of the new species comes at a time when many grain and oilseed producers in western Canada are still reeling from a severe drought last summer that slashed production.

"Knowing that in a lot of areas they're more consistently dry this year, I think that there would be some growers interested in taking a look at it," said Buth.