Many farmers are a jack of all trades, but not too many have turned their hand to plant breeding.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 5 minutes 17 seconds 5 m Western Australian farmer breeds group B tolerant canola. ( Lucinda Jose ) Download 2.4 MB

Peter Norris is an agronomist and farmer who over the past five years has selected and bred a canola variety for group B herbicide tolerance.

Group B herbicides are mainly used to control broadleaf weeds and are taken up by the plant's roots and leaves.

Mr Norris said he hoped the canola would make herbicide application more flexible.

"I had potential issues with early in-crop insects mostly and using spray contractors, it was very difficult to get them to come along and control insects without completely decontaminating their boom spray," Mr Norris said.

"So to get around this I selected a line from an old variety and that is what we have today."

It has taken five years to develop the variety which he has named Yetna Convenient Canola.

Mr Norris said interest from other agronomists convinced him to pursue the lengthy process of official registration.

"I only really kept it for my own purposes and some agronomists said that there will be issues for guys with herbicide carry over following some of the new herbicide regimes in scope barley," he said.

"That really gave me the catalyst to push ahead and register the variety."