Reading Time: 6 minutes For the last three years, Scott Keller has been crunching acreage numbers from the provincial crop insurer — and he’s not liking what he sees. “To me, everything the researchers and the Canola Council (of Canada) is saying that farmers should do; they’re not even doing anything outside of just adopting the resistant varieties,” said […] Read more
In denial? Farmers ‘failing’ in battle against clubroot
Scott Keller has crunched acreage numbers and found tight rotations and susceptible varieties are commonplace
Make a difference with good crop rotation
Benefits include lower disease control and fertilizer costs
Reading Time: 2 minutes One of the best tools to improve the bottom line, reduce future grief, and lower the risks of pests, disease and weeds is by using a diverse crop rotation. “A good crop rotation is one where there is an adequate variety of crops grown so that any one type of crop is grown only once […] Read more
When it comes to the big two crop diseases, those really were the good old days
Fifteen years ago, a ‘funny’ new disease was found — today clubroot combined with fusarium is a killer one-two punch
Reading Time: 4 minutes Fifteen years ago, Dan Orchard was working as an agronomist at a retailer when he got a phone call about something “funny” in a customer’s canola field. The plants were prematurely ripened and the roots looked strange. Orchard had a hunch of what he was looking at, but a visit with a plant pathologist confirmed […] Read more
Twelve tips to clubroot management
There are several key management tools producers need to apply to minimize the risk of clubroot either reaching a damaging level, and/or to reduce a heavy spore load of the pathogen in the soil to a tolerable level (about 1,000 spores or less per gram or teaspoon of soil will not affect crop performance). The[...]
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A two-year break can prevent a clubroot horror show
Clubroot spores live for 20 years but new research says a surprising 99 per cent die in two years — if infestations are light
Reading Time: 4 minutes *[UPDATED: Dec. 28, 2018] Still growing a canola-wheat rotation? One more year between canola crops could make a huge difference when it comes to clubroot. “Recent research has shown that 95 to 99 per cent of spores die over a two-year break,” said Dan Orchard, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada. “We were[...]
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Counties remain vigilant — but not heavy handed — in clubroot battle
Extensive scouting, canola-growing bans, and seeking farmer buy-in are keys to containment strategy
Reading Time: 4 minutes As clubroot continues to spread across Alberta, many counties are in the management — not a prevention — phase. Cody McIntosh, agricultural manager for Red Deer County, said the county inspected 140 fields this year. “We confirmed another five fields (with clubroot), which is kind of the trend that everybody is seeing,” he said. “We[...]
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Researcher offers ‘gospel’ to control clubroot before it spreads
If the infected area is small, mark it and give it special attention — which may even include hand-weeding
Reading Time: 3 minutes When the world’s top clubroot researchers gathered here earlier this month, a hot topic of discussion wasn’t cutting-edge science but an old-fashioned way of controlling a crop infestation — hand-pulling diseased plants. Once a field is heavily infested with clubroot spores, there’s virtually no economical way to deal with the infestation. But at the International[...]
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Way up north, there’s an unusual sight — soybeans
Peace Country growers are testing new early-maturing varieties of a crop associated with the American Midwest
Reading Time: 3 minutes La Crete is nearly 3,000 kilometres north of the continent’s soybean heartland, but that hasn’t stopped some farmers in the area from giving the crop a whirl. “Our most farthest north-grown soybeans… looking great in La Crete,” Canterra Seeds rep Jesse Meyer tweeted earlier this month when posting a picture of soybeans growing in the[...]
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Clubroot experts gather in Edmonton
Reading Time: < 1 minute A gathering of global clubroot experts will focus on creating a co-ordinated, cutting-edge approach to combating the soil-borne disease impacting canola growers. “With clubroot spreading across the Prairie provinces, varietal resistance breaking down and new pathotypes being identified, now is the time for a unified, collaborative approach to exchanging key insights and leading-edge ideas on[...]
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Six steps to help prevent clubroot in canola
Back in 2013, John Guelly discovered some dead canola plants with ominous-looking root galls at his Westlock-area farm. But even though clubroot was already known to be in his area, he hadn’t seen it himself, and he wasn’t sure what it looked like. People were secretive about the disease, he told farmers, agronomists and other[...]
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