The practice of seeding canola using a row crop planter is gaining interest across the Prairies.

That from Angela Brackenreed, agronomist with the Canola Council of Canada.

"I would say that increasing interest has probably been going on for the last five plus years," she said. "The uptake though has been relatively slow. There are kind of these pockets where there's maybe more. It could be for different reasons, I think some of it is just based on other crops in the rotation or crops that used to be in the rotation. A lot of the sugar beet areas do use planters for other crops now."

Brackenreed says one of the benefits is the ability to greatly reduce seeding rates and seed cost and get the same potential yield return.

However, there are also some challenges including how to get the fertilizer down with the planter. She also has concerns about how the wider rows would affect weed control.

Research on the practice has been fairly limited.