Nordic flax
About the project
Insulation, textiles, food, wood impregnation and paint. Flax is a crop with many uses that is suitable for cultivation in the Nordic Region. But today, the cultivation in the Nordic countries is limited, especially for fiber production. Hopefully NordGen’s flax projects can increase interest in the useful crop.
However, the public interest for Nordic flax cultivation has increased and in 2023, a collaborative project on Nordic flax began that was initiated by NordGen’s working group for industrial crops. The project “Evaluation and characterization of NordGen’s Nordic flax accessions to increase knowledge and facilitate use” is led by NordGen and includes the following project partners: Skånelin, the project "1 KVM LIN" and Science Park Borås.
NordGen has 27 accessions of flax in the active core collection, but there is no evaluation and characterization data available on these accessions. In addition, the accession type (fiber or oil) is missing for most of them. Therefore, the aim of the project is to evaluate and characterize all NordGen’s active core accessions of Nordic flax (and three additional flax accessions obtained by the project partner Skånelin), determine the accession type, and in cooperation with stakeholders, find the best accessions for fiber respectivley oil production with potential to be used by the fiber-flax growers in Norden. During 2023, the 27 accessions from NordGen and additional three accessions from Skånelin was cultivated for characterization.The project started during 2023 and but continue and expand during the following year.
During 2024, NordGen also begins another flax project in which a total of 436 different seed samples were recently sown to document morphological characteristics (plant height, flower color, flower size, etc) and determine whether they belong to the type for oil or fiber production. NordGen’s entire flax collection of 362 seed samples, is included in this cultivation. Most of these are categorized as breeding material donated by the former Swedish plant breeding company Svalöf Weibull. 74 additional seed samples of Nordic origin have been ordered from genebanks in Poland, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.
