This 2008 Canola Council of Canada video recommended producers “start at the top and work your way down to the root” when scouting for diseases. That meant clubroot — now the biggest threat to producers’ biggest money-maker — was discussed last (behind much less worrisome diseases such as alternaria and aster yellows). Agronomist Dan Orchard, shown here discussing sclerotinia, found the first confirmed case of clubroot but says back then, “we weren’t that scared of it.”

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

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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Clubroot is scary enough but this Canola Council of Canada video on the life cycle of the disease ups the fear factor. Above, a still from the video (available at www.clubroot.ca) shows a zoospore, an amoeba-like creature released from a clubroot spore when it senses a host plant is nearby. The zoospore, powered by two whip-like flagella, can swim a short distance in water film in the soil towards a root hair. It then clamps on and penetrates the root hair and just like in the sci-fi horror classic “Alien,” begins to reproduce. 

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

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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clubroot

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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This is not what you usually see in the Peace — a crop of soybeans. Canterra Seeds rep Jesse Meyer took (and tweeted) this photo of a soybean field near La Crete in early July.

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 galls in canola

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

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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Municipalities are working with producers to minimize the spread of clubroot, with some growers being asked to not grow canola for two years if the disease is found.

Municipalities on the front lines in clubroot war

Persuasion preferred, but no-grow orders are also being used

Reading Time: 4 minutes Municipal officials across the province are increasingly on guard in the ongoing war to slow the relentless spread of clubroot. It’s been 15 years since the pernicious soil-borne disease was first found in a canola field near Edmonton. The confirmed tally last year was 2,744 fields — but the true number is almost certainly higher.[...]
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In this video from the Canola Council of Canada, Angela Barnes, the council’s agronomist for southern Alberta, 
holds what appears — from the ground up — to be a fairly healthy canola plant. But the roots of the same plant 
(inset photo) show it is heavily infected with clubroot galls. This hidden spread of clubroot illustrates why a breakdown in resistance may not be immediately obvious in a canola field.

Key source of clubroot resistance goes AWOL

‘Grandparent’ can defeat new mutated clubroot strains but somehow it doesn’t get passed down

Reading Time: 3 minutes The ‘grandparent’ of clubroot resistance in most Canadian canola varieties is resistant to new virulent strains of clubroot — but its offspring aren’t. “It’s possible that, in the course of breeding, some of the resistant genes were lost,” said provincial research scientist Rudolph Fredua-Agyeman. European clubroot differential (ECD) 04 is a key source of clubroot[...]
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