The province received variable precipitation this spring which had pathologists and producers expecting the arrival of members of the leaf spot complex. However, Kelly Turkington with the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Lacombe Research and Development Centre said they may have been scorched by the July heat wave.

That’s no reason for farmers not to scout their fields. A late arrival of stripe rust spores blew into the province in late June, said Turkington. They likely originated in the state of Washington.

“Towards the early part of July there were reports (of stripe rust) out of Warner County and Vulcan County from a consultant and some reports in Lacombe County and then down the Highway Two corridor towards Calgary, both west and east,” he said.

Depending on the point in the season growers seeded, a stripe rust presence in cereal fields may mean a fungicide application, he said. Early-seeded crops may be out of luck from a timing perspective, but producers that seeded later may still have time to tackle the rust.

Those who may still have the chance to spray for stripe rust include those who seeded spring wheat for swath grazing or silage in late May or early June.

“Often we’ve seen in the past our worst stripe rust problems in those late-seeded fields where you might be looking at silage or swath grazing, especially where the variety is highly susceptible,” said Turkington.

Watch Glacier FarmMedia publications for more on this story.

The post Cereal leaf disease minimal in Alberta but be aware of blown-in stripe rust appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Using available videos, graphics and explanations to clarify the key blackleg resistance concepts can help farmers with proactive decision-making for maximum disease management.

Browsing a few research findings can also upgrade your knowledge of the host-pathogen dynamic.

To learn more, have a look at this Canola Council of Canada video on mitigating blackleg in canola.

The post Learn more about blackleg management in canola appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

While these are the major canola pathogens, they are a small sample of the organisms that interact with canola plants, for bad or good. There are other tests to identify potentially beneficial or pathogenic organisms in the soil.

In time, there may be more information about the risk or benefit of other organisms and a better handle on the value of other tests, the council said in a recent statement.

The post What pathogen tests should you use for canola? appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

However, one positive field was found at a more northern location, in Athabasca County. If the survey did not find bacterial leaf streak in your area, do not assume it is not present. Infection is highly impacted by weather. Warm and humid conditions favour the infection and bacteria can double multiple times within a
day.

A full map is available online at the Alberta Grains website, but should only be used for reference

The post Bacterial leaf streak in 2023 appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Reports out of Europe suggest the fungal disease could cause losses of 10 to 50 percent on oilseed rape. However, extreme losses are usually confined to a small number of fields in England and northern Europe.

University of Alberta scientists will soon publish a Canadian estimate to nail down what verticillium means for yield.

“We were the ones who gave the blackleg yield loss model … and the clubroot yield loss model,” said Sheau-Fang Hwang, a plant pathologist with the U of A. “So, everyone expects we will … (provide) the verticillium yield loss model.”

Hwang and her colleagues hoped to release their results this year, but publication will be delayed until 2024.

Verticillium stripe is a relatively new disease for canola growers in Western Canada. It was first discovered in 2014 near Winnipeg.

The fungus, Verticillium longisporum, infects canola and produces tiny, pepper-like sclerotia on or inside the stem of the plant. The sclerotia fall on the soil and into crop stubble after harvest. The small particles move with wind and water to other locations. Farmers can also pick up the fungus on their equipment and boots and transport it to other fields.

The infection interferes with the uptake of water and nutrients. Symptoms include early ripening, plant stunting and leaf chlorosis and shredding or striping of the stem tissue. The symptoms usually appear later in the growing season.

“Looking for verticillium, you have to slough off that outer stem wall … to reveal the micro-sclerotia. That’s a really key (part) of diagnosis,” said Justine Cornelsen, agronomic and regulatory services manager with BrettYoung Seeds and a former agronomist with the Canola Council of Canada.

On the Prairies, verticillium is most common in Manitoba, where it appeared in 40 percent of canola fields in 2022.

“In Manitoba, we don’t talk much about clubroot. We talk about verticillium,” said Cornelsen, who lives near Virden, Man.

The disease is also spreading across Saskatchewan. It was detected in dozens of eastern Saskatchewan fields in 2022 and in other regions this summer.

Earlier this year, Hwang authored a paper saying verticillium is a significant threat to canola production in Canada. When verticillium and blackleg are present in the same field, the two fungal diseases seem to join forces.

“(When) inoculated together in field and greenhouse experiments, blackleg severity and yield losses increased relative to when (the blackleg pathogen) was applied on its own. The severity of verticillium stripe also tended to increase,” says the 2023 paper, published in Plants.

“The results suggest that the interaction between (blackleg and verticillium) may cause more severe losses in canola.”

Cornelsen has been keeping a close eye on verticillium since it first appeared in Manitoba a decade ago.

She’s learned that some of the normal rules for crop diseases don’t apply to verticillium.

For one, verticillium thrives in hot and dry conditions. Most diseases prefer hot and humid.

“Once it gets into the plant (under) those hot and dry conditions … that pathogen is growing up through the vascular system,” she said.

“When you don’t have a bunch of rainfall, it’s able to move (through the plant) and make the symptoms more severe.”

Rain and excess moisture seem to prevent verticillium damage to canola plants.

It’s possible that crop scouts have failed to detect verticillium in the past because its symptoms are more noticeable just before or after harvest.

“That 60 per cent seed colour change, (the) typical timing for disease survey, isn’t the right timing to look for verticillium,” Cornelsen said. “It’s likely, for years, been misdiagnosed as something like blackleg.”

However, it appears that some canola varieties do have resistance to the disease.

University of Manitoba researchers have found that hybrids — in the market or in the development pipeline — are resistant or moderately resistant.

Some seed companies now promote certain hybrids in their lineup as having some degree of resistance to verticillium.

Genetic resistance in commercial canola hybrids could be preventing “drastic” yield losses at the field level in Western Canada, Cornelsen said.

– Robert Arnason is a reporter for The Western Producer.

The post Researchers study verticillium yield losses appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The report by the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre (CMBTC), in collaboration with the Manitoba Crop Alliance, says new Canadian malting barley varieties can be grown successfully in Manitoba.

With yields and quality comparable to the check variety — AAC Synergy — the study found new varieties including AAC Connect, CDC Fraser, CDC Copper, CDC Churchill and AAC Prairie are the next generation of varieties for Manitoba growers, the CMBTC said in a release Friday.

“The study showed that these new varieties offer good agronomics and the high end-use quality traits that are the hallmark of Canadian malting barley,” CMBTC managing director Peter Watts said.

According to the Manitoba Crop Alliance, total barley acres, whether for feed or malting, have declined over the last two decades on “a combination of disease concerns, market forces and difficulty to meet malting grade.”

That said, seeded acreage reports from Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp., the provincial crop insurance agency, have found Manitoba barley acres steadied in the years 2020 to 2023, at a level between 365,000 and 400,000.

Producers in Manitoba have struggled with diseases such as fusarium head blight in malting barley, but with improved disease resistance packages, better fungicide products and improved management practices, fusarium has not been a significant issue in recent years, CMBTC said.

Producers growing malting barley varieties have the option of both malting and feed markets. With a malt barley variety, farmers gain an additional 2.5 million-tonne market that they could not access with feed varieties, the centre said. As well, malt barley generally offers a premium of around $1 per bushel or more.

“Manitoba is one of the best barley producing regions in the world,” Manitoba Crop Alliance CEO Pam de Rocquigny said in the same release. “This success can be attributed to climate and geography, and our advanced farming practices.”

Barley is a good cereals crop option, as it provides many benefits when included in crop rotations. It can be planted early in the growing season and is both competitive and high yielding. Furthermore, including barley in crop rotations can provide flexibility during harvest, as it matures early, allowing harvest to be spread out between crop types, the centre said.

“In combination, these attributes make barley a great option for farmers,” says de Rocquigny.

Registrations of new malting barley varieties for producer use in Canada in recent years led to the need to evaluate those new varieties in field-scale trials, under Manitoba growing conditions, to provide data for that province’s growers on how new varieties could fit in their cropping systems.

More details from the CMBTC study can be viewed on the Manitoba Crop Alliance website.

Several companies in Manitoba source malting barley to supply domestic and international markets including CMBTC members Cargill, Richardson, Viterra, Malteurop and Boortmalt, among others.

The post CMBTC study finds new malting barley lines a fit for Manitoba appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

An effective fight against the soil-borne, canola-targeting disease requires several solutions and fall is the time to think about them.

“Because clubroot is such a complex disease, it’s really important that we acknowledge that it will need a complex solution to manage it,” said Marissa Robitaille Balog, an Agronomy Specialist with the Canola Council of Canada.

“(Resistant varieties) are not a fix-all solution, so we need to be stewarding them carefully to make sure that we have them available for the long term, which is why scouting for disease presence or resistance breakdown is so important.”

Clubroot is a disease of cruciferous plants. Its galls tie up nutrients and in extreme cases will prevent canola roots from delivering sufficient water and nutrients to the plants.

When it arrived in Alberta two decades ago, clubroot quickly found a home in acidic central Alberta soil where it thrives, said Tom Ernst, a researcher with Corteva Agriscience.

“If you look at the Edmonton area where it was first found, you get slightly more acidic soils than, say, further down south. That helps facilitate the establishment of the disease.”

However, producers who grow canola in alkaline soil shouldn’t be complacent. The disease has mutated, said Ernst, so different strains of clubroot can affect those soils as well.

“People hypothesized that it’s not spreading down (south) or maybe our soil pH is high enough that we’re going to avoid getting it. And it’s not exactly the case.

“We’re finding there’s enough diversity in clubroot that there are pathotypes that will infect crops in higher pH situations.”

Fall is an excellent time to scout for the disease, he said.

“If you come into an area of your field that has lower yields and it’s confusing, why not get out and pull some plants? If you pull a plant and it has galls, then you know it’s there. If you know where it is, that helps you manage it a little bit better. You can avoid those areas, maybe work them last in the process of planting next year.”

Robitaille recommended scouting multiple parts of the field, not just the field entrance.

“If your field has multiple entrances, really focus on those high traffic areas or areas that are really prone to moisture, keeping an eye out throughout the growing season for any prematurely dying patches that may be susceptible to clubroot.”

Post-harvest is also ideal for soil sampling. If galls are found while scouting, the next step should be a soil test, said Robitaille.

“We highly suggest soil testing to determine if there is clubroot DNA present.”

Sampling is also a key tool to check whether spore loads are low enough for seeding canola the year after planting a non-canola crop. Wheat, for example, can’t spread clubroot but the movement of soil with equipment can carry it.

“You’ll want to check to see if your spore loads are low enough by collecting soil samples after harvest and seeing if it’s up to standards to go into canola cultivation in the following year,” said Ernst.  

Some producers use soil amendments or liming to raise soil pH so it’s less susceptible to clubroot, but those can be expensive options, he said.

“None of that’s really taken off on any large scale. It’s a little bit cost-prohibitive.”

Controlling clubroot doesn’t work in a vacuum, said Robitaille.

“Controlling fall weeds that may possibly serve as a host for a clubroot pathogen is important.”

Much of fall/winter clubroot management will be done around the kitchen table, strategizing for the coming growing season. One of those considerations may be the painful — but ultimately beneficial — decision to not plant canola in clubroot-infected fields for two years.

“The recommendation of a two-year break between growing canola can’t be understated in terms of its effectiveness,” said Ernst.

“Field-based data from Alberta shows that if you can extend your rotation from a one-in-two to a one-in-three canola rotation, you can help bring down the clubroot resting spore load in the field by about 90 per cent.”

Virtually all canola growers recognize the value of rotating crops, but what about rotating canola varieties or genetics? This has become a recommended practice as well, said Robitaille.

“If you’re growing a resistant variety and you’re seeing breakdown happening in the field, that’s an indication that you need to be switching genetics,” she said.

“Pathotypes in the field are often diverse and there can be multiple pathotypes present at once. As populations become more diverse and we’re able to breed more clubroot resistant genes and varieties, the usefulness of rotating different varieties will definitely increase.”

The post Cut clubroot off at the pass by thinking ahead appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Results Driven Agriculture Research, the Alberta Canola Producers Commission and the Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission have awarded $1.25 million to Stephen Strelkov at the University of Alberta to lead an expert team in:

• breeding resistance into new crop varieties; 
• developing new ways to control the pathogen; and
• identifying clubroot resistance genes.

As part of the five-year project, the team is expected to contribute to the sustainable long-term control of clubroot and improved resistance stewardship, helping producers manage and reduce clubroot spores that contaminate their fields. Clubroot can make infected land less desirable to some buyers and renters.

The post Investing in clubroot research appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

They identified 25 unique clubroot pathotypes from samples collected from more than 250 fields in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 2019 and 2020. Seven of the strains are new, six of which can bypass the crop’s bred resistance against the disease. 

“The findings really underscore how quickly pathotype shifts are occurring and how quickly we are finding new pathotypes. And it is likely we will continue to find new ones,” study lead Keisha Hollman, a PhD candidate in plant science, said in a U of A release. 

Clubroot is caused by a parasite that infests field soil with resting spores that can survive up to 20 years. 

The release said most of the pathotypes were found in only a handful of fields, but the dis- ease’s ability to continue to emerge poses a challenge for canola producers. It can take up to a decade to develop a clubroot-resistant plant. 

Hollman said producers must continue to manage the risk through integrated management strategies that help take the pressure off genetic resistance alone. Those measures include sanitizing farm equipment between fields and rotating out of canola for at least two years — a strategy found in a 2019 U of A study to reduce the number of clubroot spores by about 90 per cent in field soil.

The post New clubroot strains discovered appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Contracts for frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ) at ICE hit a high of $3.292/lb. during the session, the second highest price ever, just shy of the record of $3.3175/lb. seen on Aug. 17 (all figures US$).

Florida’s orange crop this year was already on the way to being small, only around half the size it produced just two years ago, due to diseases and erratic weather. The hurricane will exacerbate the situation.

“There is little hope for a bigger crop next year,” said commodities analyst Judith Ganes.

Fields in Florida were still recovering from the impact of hurricane Ian in 2019, while also suffering from a bacterial disease known as greening.

Authorities in Florida have yet to evaluate damage to infrastructure and agricultural production as the storm moved over to Georgia.

Also on Wednesday, Brazilian industry group CitrusBR said in a statement that stocks of orange juice at the end of the 2022-23 season (July-June) fell 40 per cent to 84,745 metric tonnes, the lowest level since the group started to collect the data 12 years ago.

CitrusBR said the fall is a result of a smaller-than-expected crop in the world’s largest orange juice producer and exporter, as well as falling juice yields from the fruits.

— Reporting for Reuters by Marcelo Teixeira.

The post Orange juice prices near all-time high as storm hits Florida appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.