A new Manitoba lab with federal, provincial and canola industry backing has been opened with the goal of staying a step ahead of canola diseases such as clubroot and verticillium wilt. The federal and Manitoba governments on Thursday announced $969,000 for equipment, including a polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) machine, and $250,000 for research at the […] Read more
Manitoba canola pest lab backed for equipment, research
Tight rotations may not harm canola yields — but soil health suffers
A long-term study on diversity in rotations produced some surprises, but the benefits were also clear
Reading Time: 3 minutes Brian Beres wasn’t surprised to find more diverse rotations increase cereal grain yields, improve soil health, and increase microbial biomass. What surprised him was how canola fared under tight rotations. Quite well, as a matter of fact. “It was surprising to see that canola didn’t respond to diversity if you looked at crop response variables […] Read more
Trouble looming if there’s another cool, wet spring
Four to Watch: Increasing disease levels over the last few years could lead to big-time outbreaks if the environmental conditions are right
Reading Time: 3 minutes This much is known. “We’re not going to have a disease-free year — that’s for sure,” said Michael Harding, a research scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. “The environment will determine how much we see and which pathogens have the ability to cause the most serious issues.” And just what kind of environment — […] Read more
Clubroot control strategies
The dos and dont's of clubroot
Reading Time: 2 minutes By now it’s clear. Some control strategies work. Others, says agronomist Dan Orchard, just don’t. Pulling plants from dead patches at the end of the season and looking for the disease certainly worked. But it would have worked even better if the recommendation, right from the start, had been to pull plants and check the […] Read more
Clubroot not just another disease
The response to clubroot has been uneven and often ineffective, but we need to learn from what’s worked to prevent a crisis situation
Reading Time: 3 minutes What surprised me most while researching the origins and spread of clubroot was just how devastating this disease is. Before travelling through the most affected areas and interviewing those at ground zero, I thought of clubroot as just another crop disease. It’s not. But unfortunately, many canola growers still don’t fully realize the threat they […] Read more
Resistant clubroot a ‘nightmare’ scenario
Continuous cropping likely cause of new resistant clubroot pathogen, but canola council says tight rotations are still OK for some
Reading Time: 4 minutes The breakdown of a clubroot-resistant variety just four years after it came on the market is a “nightmare” — but doesn’t mean growers in clubroot-free areas can’t plant canola every other year, say industry officials. “It’s unfortunate that this had to happen,” said Ward Toma, general manager of the Alberta Canola Producers Commission. “We had […] Read more
Plant diseases to look for in 2014
Provincial officials say the story for 2013 was of extremely localized disease outbreaks and the one for this coming year could be the arrival of new threats
Reading Time: 4 minutes Last year underscored the need for timely scouting for crop diseases. “Disease patterns matched the weather,” provincial pathology researcher Mike Harding said at last month’s 2014 Irrigation Update conference. “Different conditions led to serious disease issues in one area and virtually none just 20 miles away.” For example, cereal leaf spot diseases were widespread especially […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
