There's a sense of urgency surrounding the research looking at why the gluten strength of spring wheat grown in western Canada has declined, says an official with the Canadian International Grains Institute.

Several international customers have expressed concerns about changes to Canada Western Red Spring wheat quality. Cigi is leading several studies trying to determine the impact of farmers' production decisions, considering variables such as seed variety, fungicide use, increased glyphosate application and higher nitrogen fertilizer rates.

"It's been urgent for us for a while, but now there's a greater awareness. Everybody else is coming on board and saying 'let's get to the bottom of this.' Everybody I talk to would like to know the answer right now," says Rex Newkirk, Cigi's director of research and business development. "We have some very compelling information already, but until we know exactly what's happening we have to be careful before we draw conclusions and have people change their practices or varieties."

The entire western Canadian wheat industry is now focused on figuring out the cause of the declining gluten strength as soon as possible, he says.

"People are very interested in acting on this quickly. The grain elevators want to make sure when they sell something, that their customer is happy with it, so they are very interested. Producers are interested in producing a very high quality product, so we're working on it very actively," says Newkirk.

It's possible recommendations could be made to producers after the 2013 growing season.

"Our hope is after we get the plot work done this fall that we'll have some pretty good insight. We collected samples from last year's plots, and that's giving us some pretty good information, but hopefully this winter we'll be able to identify some key factors, and be able to make recommendations going into the spring," explains Newkirk.

He says they understand weather has a major impact on gluten strength.

"We have no control on that, but if we can understand the other factors, perhaps we can address the situation so we can produce a higher quality and more consistent product, so we can meet the customers' mark every time," he says.