“The investment of $5.7 million will help grain producers in Ontario and across the country keep their businesses strong and competitive,” Guelph MP Lloyd Longfield said at the funding announcement at Woodrill Farms Ltd. “Every dollar that we invest in research puts almost $33 in the producers’ pocket, and that’s a pretty good return on investment.”

The Cropping Systems Cluster will be led by the Canadian Field Crop Research Alliance (CFCRA) and funding is provided through the AgriScience Program – Clusters Component, an initiative under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (SCAP).

The funding will be matched by an additional $4.8 million from industry for a total investment of up to $10.5 million over five years.

The funding supports research exploring environmental and economic impacts of crop rotations integrating soybean, corn and oats, reduction of business risk through secure rotational crops, bolstering Canada’s economy and food supply in the face of climate change for generations to come, Longfield said.

“The research is going to include developing new varieties that meet the quality demands of processors and consumers and new short-season soybean varieties,” he said. “Activities will also explore how diverse crop rotations can play a central role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and how better genetics, land management and fertilizer use can improve nitrogen use efficiency to protect the environment.”

Longfield said last year, Ontario farm cash receipts for soybeans, corn and oats hit $4.2 billion, which is half of Canada’s total farm cash receipts. This is especially significant given Ontario leads in corn production and oat processing and is the birthplace of Canadian-grown soybeans.

Josh Cowan, CFCRA vice-president, said the five research initiatives have already been vetted, approved and collaborated with institutions across Canada and several stakeholders from seed to processing.

“When you look at a breeding program, it doesn’t start and stop at any point in time, but you’re constantly evaluating what you need to do and trying to improve,” explained Cowan. “So there’ll be variety releases throughout the course of the five years, as those breeding programs continue to evolve.”

Greg Hannam, co-owner of Woodrill Farms Ltd. and a director at SeCan, said plant breeding projects crops for corn, soybeans and oats bring will bring new varieties with better disease packages, stress tolerance and beneficial end-user properties to the market and provide the foundation for on-farm profitability and environmental stewardship.

Federal investment in grain research is critical because individual farms and farm associations are limited in what they can achieve. Thin profit margins hinder project financing, Hannam said.

“The opportunity to partner with government and other organizations to be able to scale research up and get more of them going,” he said. “I’m optimistic, excited and there’s comfort there as well. Because we have this (breeding research) going on, I can focus my energies on other things and other research activities.”

Grain Farmers of Ontario CEO Crosby Devitt said the investments in corn, oat, and soybean research through the Cropping Systems Cluster “will keep these crops profitable and sustainable for Ontario farmers, increasing quality and yields while finding new solutions for environmental stressors like drought and diseases. This work will also contribute to understanding practices that might allow farmers to contribute to Canada’s climate targets. Research is the key to meeting those objectives.”

Grain Farmers of Ontario is a founding member of the CFCRA, and also supports eastern Canadian wheat research in the Canadian National Wheat Cluster.

The Sustainable Canadian Agricfulture Partnership (SCAP) is a five-year, $3 billion investment by federal, provincial and territorial governments to strengthen the agriculture and agri-food sector. SCAP builds on the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, the previous five-year agreement that ended on March 31, 2023.

The CFCRA is a not-for-profit entity founded in 2010 with an interest in advancing the economic and environmental sustainability of field crops in Canada, particularly barley, corn, soybean, oat, and wheat. The CFCRA is comprised of provincial farm organizations and industry partners, including Atlantic Grains Council, Grain Farmers of Ontario, Producteurs de grains du Québec, Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers, Manitoba Crop Alliance, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers, Prairie Oat Growers Association, SeCan, and FP Genetics.

The post Feds invest in research to promote more diverse crop rotations appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“We’ve had several years in a row of favourable conditions for kochia growth. That also can contribute to selection pressure for resistance, when herbicides are some of the primary measures that we’re using to manage these kochia populations,” says Charles Geddes, a research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, Lethbridge.

Kochia can flourish in hot, dry conditions and is more prevalent in southern Alberta, although the pest has also been found in the Peace River region.

“It’s assumed that all kochia is now Group 2 resistant, to the point of where it’s not even worth testing for Group 2-resistant herbicides because we find them in every population we test,” said Geddes, who conducted a survey of over 300 kochia populations in Alberta in 2021.

Glyphosate resistance was present in 78 per cent of the populations in that survey.

Group 4 resistance is also growing, and 28 per cent of surveyed kochia populations were resistant to dicamba, a Group 4 herbicide. About 44 per cent of populations surveyed were resistant to fluxroxypur, another Group 4.

“We’re seeing resistance to those three modes of action — Group 2, Group 4 and Group 9,” Geddes said.

Lewis Baarda, on-farm research manager with Farming Smarter in Lethbridge, tried one experiment using chemicals on a limited basis. The group mapped fields with drones, right after harvest when the crop had senesced and the kochia was still bright green and easy to identify.

“We did this in a few fields over four yields. It was a pretty effective technique to figure out where kochia is,” Baarda said.

Once the group found the plants, they sprayed them with a chemical to which the kochia is not yet resistant.

“It’s not a non-chemical control, but it is a little more precise with that chemical application,” he said.

The chemical was sprayed only on about 30 acres where the kochia was, rather than the whole field.

The group also tried planting some salt-tolerant forages next to the kochia.

“That had mixed success,” said Baarda, adding a lot of work has been looking at kochia on prime land, rather than marginal land.

“We found that seeding the salt-tolerant crop mix was harder to establishe than we hoped it was. Just by the nature of seeding it there, you’ve limited your chemical controls. By year two in one location, it did establish pretty well and was competing on that margin between really saline areas and productive areas, so in between that zone was pretty effective.”

The study was done at three locations in southern Alberta, sites close to Medicine Hat, Burdett and Scandia.

Rotation and seeding rates

Geddes said narrow rows and higher seeding rates will promote crops that compete with kochia and reduce the number of seeds going into the soil.

“If you can get effective management of kochia for even a couple years in a row, that will go a long way to decreasing the kochia population in a field. What we found is that combining a four-year crop rotation when we combined the narrow rows and the higher seeding rates in all the crops we grew, we were able to reduce kochia biomass overall by 80 per cent.”

“That 80 per cent threshold is essentially the same as the 80 per cent threshold required by herbicide regulators to register an herbicide for control of a specific weed.” he said.

Geddes and his team also looked at diverse crop rotation, usually summer annuals, or rotating between a winter annual and a summer annual, like winter wheat and then a summer annual crop, as well as a perennial crop. Rotations including winter wheat reduced kochia biomass by 64 per cent and density by 74 per cent on the third year of the study .

Don’t avoid patches

Geddes suggests dealing with patches sooner rather than later.

“Kochia tends to be quite patchy and indeterminate, so it’s green at the time of harvest. What we see a lot is that farmers harvest around the kochia patches in their field and leave those patches until they can deal with them after harvest.”

But research on kochia’s seed viability suggests that this is not a good practice, and ideally, a farmer should come in and cut or mow patches before harvest.

“It’s right during the harvest window where kochia is producing all its seed. If you can come in right before you start harvest and remove those patches that you will be harvesting around anyway, then you can help prevent some of that seed production.”

Other research suggests that burying the seed can help reduce the number of plants that remain after tillage.

“It’s important to balance that with the impacts that tillage can have on soil health, but it can have some positive benefits when it comes to kochia management. Using some strategic tillage in some dense patches might really help with kochia,” Geddes said.

Research continues.

“We’re trying to come up with strategies to manage herbicide-resistant kochia. The issue is likely to become more impactful in the future.”

The post Controlling herbicide-resistant kochia requires some different strategies appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The tool, a table that uses 10 years’ worth of AFSC crop data, “provides a breakdown of the average percent yield of certain crops when seeded into specific crop stubble.”

The table, which has 12 crops (six cereals, three pulses, canola, flax and mustard), has some counterintuitive findings.

For example, it says spring wheat, durum and canola yield higher when seeded into flax stubble rather than lentil stubble, with canola faring particularly poorly in lentil stubble. But that’s not the case when comparing flax stubble and pea stubble. But stubble is only one consideration among many, the cereal group notes.

“Farmers can utilize the table to assess crop rotation in combination with the various other factors impacting rotation decisions.”

The table can be found at the Alberta Wheat Commission website.

The post Stubble in crop rotations might surprise you appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“The clubroot-infested area is spreading at roughly about 30 kilometres a year, and we’re only managing it at 20 kilometres a year,” said Dan Orchard, agronomy specialist for the Canola Council of Canada.

“We got an appreciation this year for just how fast it can spread. We’re way behind it — chasing it out rather than choking it in.”

Clubroot was first discovered in central Alberta in 2003, and since then has spread to more than 1,000 fields in over 30 counties. Last month, it was discovered for the first time in the Peace region (in Big Lakes County). Canola industry officials are still trying to trace how the disease moved into the area, as well as which strain of clubroot it is.

• Read more: Clubroot climbs up into the Peace region
• Read more: Clubroot ‘heavily’ infests NW Saskatchewan field

But for Sexsmith-area producer Greg Sears, that rapid spread is a wake-up call.

“Anything as ominous as clubroot is worrying when it’s spreading at any rate — but certainly, it’s covering a lot of ground quickly, and it doesn’t give us a lot of time to look at our practices and make the changes we need to,” said Sears, chair of the Alberta Canola Producers Commission.

Even so, Sears calls clubroot’s spread north “inevitable.”

“There’s nothing magical about our soils that would prevent clubroot from migrating here,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that it’s been identified, but I think it was inevitable.”

That’s partially because “there’s a certain level of denial” about clubroot, especially in areas that haven’t been affected by the disease in the past.

“There are a lot of crossed fingers that clubroot isn’t going to make it into the area,” said Sears.

But crossed fingers aren’t enough to slow the spread of the disease, and many producers don’t want to risk losing canola as a cash crop by changing their management practices or extending their rotations.

“Canola-cereal rotations have become a very desirable rotation,” said Sears. “Canola works well on people’s operations. It’s a great crop to grow, both from a revenue standpoint and with the herbicide options for cleaning up land.

“It’s pretty hard to give that up.”

‘Going to hurt’

But the rapid spread of clubroot may soon force their hands.

“In the Peace Country, we’ve relied quite heavily on canola as a good-income crop, and if we don’t get on top of it early, we’re going to see our ability to grow it on a regular basis diminished,” said Sears. “When you’re used to having canola income every two or three years off a piece of land and you end up going to every five or six because clubroot becomes that much of a problem, that is a significant issue.

“That’s going to hurt quite a bit, especially up here in the Peace Country where we don’t have a lot of alternative crops.”

Clubroot “isn’t going to go away in a heartbeat,” added Canola Council agronomist Gregory Sekulic, who’s based in the Peace.

“It’s something we’re going to have to manage quite aggressively in the short term, and honestly, we’re going to have to do a better job of managing it than we have been,” he said.

“It’s not a surprise that we found it, but now that it’s here, growers do need to be that much more cognizant of managing it.

“We really want growers to assume that all fields have clubroot.”

The first step is growing a resistant variety.

“Once the disease has been identified on your field, look into resistant varieties immediately,” said Sekulic. “You need to switch all of your varieties to resistant varieties. Period. That goes for growers in the immediate vicinity as well.”

Orchard agrees.

“These fields we’re now finding are all susceptible varieties,” he said. “By the time they’re discovering it, the crop is dead in huge areas. The amount of spores in the soil is astronomical, and it now becomes a difficult disease to manage.

“When other counties are diligent and finding it really, really early, the management list is far more extensive.”

Managing disease resistance

But producers also need to manage disease resistance in their varieties.

“Use the same resistance too often and it won’t work. It’s like an antibiotic that you repeatedly take that eventually doesn’t work,” said Orchard.

“That’s what’s happening in the areas with really high spore loads and canola every second year with the same genetics.”

It only takes about two crops of a resistant variety for the pathogen to start to shift to overcome it, said Murray Hartman, provincial oilseed specialist.

“If you start growing a resistant variety before you know there’s any symptoms, you can probably grow that crop three or four times,” he said. “But if you wait until you’ve got the patches, you’re only going to grow it twice before you’ve got these new strains.”

That’s why officials say “don’t grow a resistant variety more than once every four years.”

“Two crops would give us almost 10 years to breed new varieties,” said Hartman. “Unfortunately, we had guys growing them back to back, and within three years, the resistance was starting to fail in spots.”

Extending the crop rotation “isn’t so much about yield penalties or agronomics — it’s to protect resistance,” said Orchard.

“If you’re on a two-year rotation, then it’s four years before your resistance doesn’t work anymore,” he said.

“The longer you stretch out your rotation, the longer you’ll have until the resistance doesn’t work. You’ll get the same number of canola crops out of that field. It’s just whether you want to stop growing canola in four years or eight.”

Other best practices

Extending the crop rotation comes with other benefits as well, said Sekulic.

“For disease management, a longer rotation is going to be better,” he said. “We definitely want to encourage growers to introduce as much diversity into their fields as possible. The longer a field is out of canola, the fewer spores that will be in it.

“Once clubroot is found, we absolutely need to stretch our rotations to at least one in four.”

Sanitation should also be “first and foremost in producers’ minds,” he added.

“When they’re travelling from field to field, they need to make sure their soil stays at home,” he said. “And when we’re bringing equipment in from other parts of the province, we really want to make sure that it’s been pressure washed aggressively, ideally with a bleach solution to kill any spores.”

Incorporating those management practices might be a hard sell for producers who can’t afford to extend their rotation or stop during a busy harvest to sanitize their equipment. But ultimately, the future viability of canola as a crop may depend on it, said Sears.

“It is hard to stop at the end of the field before going to the next one and get rid of all the excess dirt. And it is hard to try a new crop,” said Sears.

“But clubroot is a very significant and very real issue for us in Canada, and I think you just have to close your eyes and imagine what your farm would be like if you couldn’t grow canola.

“It’s one of those tough choices that we need to make.”

And those tough choices need to be made sooner rather than later.

“You can’t switch from a one-in-two rotation to a one-in-four rotation overnight. We need to start making those changes right away so that we’re ready for it.”

The post Imagine you couldn’t grow canola, warns farm leader appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Eight years on, Bott and wife Bonita — and a lot of residents of Clearwater County — are glad they did.

“People are also really enjoying looking at the sunflowers when they’re on the highway,” said Bott.

They’re not the only ones. The couple grows early varieties of black-shelled sunflowers for birdseed, and bird lovers are happy to have a local supplier.

“It’s a little cheaper to buy than in stores, and people love coming out to the farm and picking up their birdseed,” said Bott. “When you stick your head in a bin of this fresh sunflower seed, it just smells so spicy. The fresh stuff coming off the fields is really nice smelling and the birds love it.”

It’s a niche crop — the Botts grow about 10 acres each year, with each acre yielding about 2,000 pounds of sunflowers — but one that, at first glance, seemed a poor choice. Clearwater County only gets about 95 frost-free days, so later-maturing varieties don’t work. And there’s no weed control options for early-season varieties of sunflower, so the crop must move to a new field each year.

Peas, cereals, and canola have been the mainstays on Providence Acres, but the couple wanted to diversify. They’ve experimented with soybeans, corn and giant pumpkins, but sunflowers are looking like a good bet to become a permanent part of their rotation.

“We’re starting to get the confidence to put the sunflowers in the rotation, and our confidence has been gaining every year,” said Bott. “We keep planting them and taking a few acres out of the rotation to do that. We keep having success.”

The crop is planted around May 10, using a Flexicoil 5000 air drill with nine-inch spacing, and a heavy seeding rate. Rather than use their own seed, the couple buys from a seed grower in Ponoka.

“We know that in this country we’re always dealing with short growing seasons, so if we up our seeding rates, we can cut back on our maturity,” Bott said during a farm tour organized by Clearwater County Agricultural Services and Landcare.

A high plant density forces the sunflowers to compete against each other for resources, so they set seed faster and mature earlier. They don’t require any fertilizer or additional inputs and have no disease issues. Plants are straight cut in late October or early November, when they are at about 10 per cent moisture and have been hit with a frost.

“When the plants are ready, you just tap them and the seeds fall out when they’re ready to harvest,” he said.

The sunflowers don’t need to be dried for storage. The stalks get chopped with a combine, and then the field is disked and the stalks disintegrate. The organic matter is left on the field, which may provide a nutritional benefit for the crops grown there the following year.

It’s not the only way the couple is diversifying their operation, they also sell flowers for weddings and during the Leslieville Antique Days as well as flower shops in Rocky Mountain House.

This year’s sunflower crop was the best yet, but Bott said he’s not going to expand acreage too quickly.

“That step you make from 10 acres to 50 — that’s a big step.”

The post Venture into sunflowers proves profitable appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Last fall, Evans took delivery of a custom-built U.K.-manufactured Robocrop InRow Weeder, which uses cutting-edge video image analysis to identify and target weeds, leaving the crop behind.

After seeing what the cultivator could do to his wild oats, thistle and quackgrass this spring, the south-central Manitoba farmer is convinced he’s found a solution to his weed problems. And visitors are equally impressed.

“I’ve had a few tours to the farm this summer,” said Evans. Those watching the 22-foot cultivator yank out weeds between his 6-1/2-inch row field crops are calling this “a complete game changer for the organic industry.”

“Everyone is pretty excited about it,” he said during a recent organic farming systems tour.

“I think it’s going to change organics in Western Canada. There’s good potential in organic, but the weed competition always seems to take that potential out.”

The 38-year-old, who is also an electrician, has farmed 500 acres organically since switching out of a much larger conventional farm operation in 2004 when his health was affected by chemicals.

Nervous at first

Any new and relatively effective mechanical means to control weeds is bound to be welcomed by organic farmers, whose weed problems can quickly get out of hand despite using careful rotations, use of cover crops, or increased seeding rates.

Evans said what prompted him to seek alternatives was a combination of his own mounting frustration with narrow windows to harrow, which he’s largely relied on for weed control, plus a question raised at last year’s organic field tour: ‘Isn’t there another way to control weeds after seeding?’

“I started searching on the Internet and stumbled across this watching YouTube videos,” he said. A few conversations with U.K manufacturer Garford and a long look at his own fields’ weed patterns convinced him this approach might work.

“Harrowing needs to be done within a matter of days and I wasn’t getting the timing perfect,” he said.

He admits being nervous on the first day out with the Robocrop, wondering just how precise it would be.

“I think it took about three hours to make the first outside round… I was just constantly checking, and you have to get the cameras set up so they follow the rows properly,” he said.

But any fears of ripping out his newly planted field were quickly dispelled.

How it works

The cultivator is guided by two video cameras that use colour and pattern recognition software to identify the weeds and control the weeding rotor that takes them out.

It is extremely precise, says Evans, adding that the company’s own claim is it is accurate to within three-eighths of an inch (10 millimetres).

“This is more accurate than RTK GPS which is only accurate to one inch,” he said.

He has used it on crops of peas, mustard, beans, wheat, barley and flax, with the machine covering between 10 and 12 acres an hour.

Evans said he’s impressed with its ability to consistently cut down weeds, regardless of what height they’ve reached, while leaving the crop behind.

“I’m very happy with the way it’s performing and the job it’s doing.”

He has set up test plots to determine what his new weed control measure will do for yields. But he’s already convinced the machine is worth its $80,000 price tag.

“A yield increase of a bushel an acre will justify the cost,” he said.

The cultivator was purchased from Willsie Equipment Sales in Ontario.

The post The British are coming! And taking precision tillage to a new level appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

But what’s causing this “mystery syndrome” has Alberta experts scratching their heads.

“You’ve got something that should be forming a pod, and it turns into a weirdly shaped leaf or a piece of stem or something,” said Greg Sekulic, Peace region agronomist with the Canola Council of Canada.

Council agronomists in Alberta first started noticing bizarre morphology — the form and structure of a plant — in canola fields at the early-flowering, late-bud stage in 2012. Dubbed the “mystery syndrome,” these deviations have been spotted from the Peace country to Calgary, and from Camrose all the way east to the Saskatchewan border.

In some fields, 80 per cent of the plants had developed the condition, and a dry year seems to make it worse.

“I could really walk into any field and find a few examples,” said Sekulic. “I’ve yet to be in a field this spring that doesn’t have it.”

The team at the Canola Council of Canada began running tests, looking for herbicide carry-over or tank contamination. They examined crop rotations and varieties; herbicide formulations; temperature and chemical interactions; and sent samples to be tested for diseases or insect infestations like aster yellows. Plant pathologists, entomologists and oilseed specialist Murray Hartman were consulted.

All insect pests and plant diseases were ruled out.

“We ran every test we could,” said Sekulic. “There was nothing common across the hundreds of fields that we found. But by the time we had submitted all the tests, the plants had shaken it off and started yielding normally.”

Plants that recovered from “mystery syndrome” showed weird branching leaves and stems.

“Above that, the plants would be normal, with normal healthy pods — we didn’t seem to lose much maturity or even yield,” said Sekulic. “It’s just a phase of its life where things looked really odd.”

In some cases, agronomists could see what looked like a pod abortion, or buds that had died off for inexplicable reasons.

No one has any idea what has triggered this strange phenomena. The experts consulted agreed that the plants developed this way due to some sort of environmental factor and are still working to solve the mystery.

“It’s a bit of a non-story because everything seems to work out OK,” said Sekulic. “A few people attributed it to Group 2 damage of some kind, either carry-over or tank contamination. In a lot of these cases, we really ruled that out because the symptoms and the histories on the fields really didn’t quite fit.”

Although widespread, the symptoms he has seen this year haven’t been as varied as in 2012.

“It’s frustrating because it’s something that you can readily observe, but not explain.”

The post It’s a bit creepy, but ‘mystery syndrome’ is no cause for alarm appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

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 like protein and yield — there was no difference between two-year rotations and three-year rotations with canola,” said the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada biologist.

“You begin to understand why these guys are getting away with these really tight rotations of canola. It really isn’t impacting their bottom line of grain yield at all.”

Beres’ research began in Lethbridge in 2008 as a way to study how cereal crops might respond to continuous cropping in the event of an issue that requires field isolation. Using triticale “as a proxy” for other cereals, Beres studied rotations that had low diversity (triticale and soft white spring wheat), medium diversity (triticale with peas or canola), and high diversity (canola, triticale, and peas).

The first thing he looked at was yield.

“The highest-diversity rotation of canola, triticale, and peas produced the highest yield, followed closely by just triticale and canola, then by triticale and peas, and finally just the cereal-based system,” he said, adding that growing cereals back to back, year after year, could cut yields by up to 17 per cent.

“Cereals are definitely responding to diversity.”

But while canola yields may not suffer from lack of diversity in tight rotations, soil health does.

“If you start to look below ground, things look a lot different,” said Beres, who will be giving a detailed presentation on his study at Agronomy Update 2015 in Lethbridge on Jan. 20.

“The highest-diversity rotation was creating the most microbial biomass.”

The rotations including peas produced the most microbial biomass, followed — “interestingly” — by a rotation of strictly cereals. Microbial biomass suffered the most in the triticale-canola rotation.

“Even though there’s no difference between grain yield, what’s going on below ground is quite different, where one that has more diversity is ranked first and the other is ranked fifth,” he said, adding that it took more than five years to see these effects on soil health.

“A farmer’s not going to see that with what he’s doing.”

And while peas didn’t yield as well in the early years of the project, rotations with peas in them saw long-term benefits, possibly as a result of nitrogen fixation in the soil.

“It seems like it’s taking a long time, but the importance of those peas over time for both grain yield and some of the variables below ground are starting to have an impact later on.”

Overall, his team found that soil is “definitely not as healthy as it could be” in tight rotations.

“The message that’s missing for canola producers is that diversity equals soil health, even though you’re not seeing reductions in grain yield with tight rotations,” he said.

“I don’t know if you could say there’s a degradation of soil health with tight canola rotations, but certainly, you’re not deriving the kinds of benefits we observe with a high-diversity rotation.”

Besides improving soil health, diversity is important for “optimum production” in other ways, he said.

“You can get away with a tight canola rotation, but eventually that might catch up to you with respect to blackleg and clubroot,” he said. “Diversity should offer less incidence of disease and higher attainable yields, and there should be reduced incidences of other pests, like insects and weeds.”

And with clean durum outpricing canola this past growing season, rotation diversity is “sort of a no-brainer” at this point, said Beres.

“With the new marketing era, I don’t see how there could be a really poor business case with having more diversity in some of these rotations,” he said.

“Today, there’s good markets for canola, but for cereals as well and even peas, so I think there’s a business case to be made.”

Beres will also be giving a presentation on fusarium head blight management at Agronomy Update 2015 on Jan. 21.

The post Tight rotations may not harm canola yields — but soil health suffers appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

However, the four-year ideal often clashes with production reality: canola has been the big money-maker, and while legumes are good for nitrogen fixing, they usually pay less and can present big challenges with disease, standability and harvestability compared to cereals.

But with cereal and canola prices down and fertilizer prices up, farmers are looking for other options. Enter faba bean and soybean — albeit new and improved versions of each.

Alberta faba bean acreage shot up from 6,000 acres in 2012 to between 25,000 and 30,000 acres last year, and then almost tripled again with about 80,000 acres this year.

“It’s still not a huge acreage in total, but the interest is growing very, very quickly — depending on producer success rate and pricing, I’d say we could potentially see acreage double again in 2015,” said Robyne Bowness, pulse research scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development.

Extremely low disease incidence and pest problems, easy harvestability, and good potential profitability are all drivers.

“Last year, we saw a big hype in faba bean and the acreage exploded,” said Bowness. “Now farmers are gaining some confidence in them and increasing their acreage.”

• More from the Alberta Farmer Express: It was a fab-ulous year for growing broad beans

At just over 10,000 acres in Alberta, soybean production is currently very small. However, seed grower Patrick Fabian says interest is ballooning, particularly as growers here look eastward to Saskatchewan, which saw soybean acreage double to 370,000 acres this year, and Manitoba, where acreage was up 17.7 per cent to 1.2 million acres.

“There is the potential for a quarter of a million acres over the next number of years,” said Fabian. “The thing we have as a challenge in Alberta is low nighttime temperatures, and that’s a huge obstacle to overcome. Otherwise, they would already have swept Alberta by storm the way they have Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

“But some new varieties are proving themselves in our interesting climate, and it is now possible for some Alberta growers to have really good success.”

Both beans are cheap to grow because they fix rather than require nitrogen. And because they’re fairly new to the province, neither yet faces significant disease or pest pressure. Soybean is RoundUp Ready so offers easy weed management. And both crops stand well and are easy to harvest: a major benefit for farmers frustrated by hard-to-manage pea crops.

• More from the Alberta Farmer Express: Watch for lygus bug damage on faba beans

Alberta’s short growing season is challenging for traditional faba bean, but the newly released varieties gaining production traction now are tailor-made to suit the cool, moist parts of this province. Top producers are seeing 60, 70, and as high as 100 bushels per acre with prices this spring at $8 per bushel, making for returns as good or higher than peas.

Soybeans, on the other hand, require daytime heat and temperatures of at least 10 C at night, said Fabian. While Bowness cautions that soybean is a “risky” proposition for Alberta producers, Fabian said producers can have success so long as they do their homework first.

“What I tell clients is go on to farmzone.com and do a historic check of overnight lows in your area for the last six to seven years,” he said.

“If you have five or more nights below 10 C during the growing season, that would give me a flag. At 10 or more nights of 10 C or less, don’t waste your money.”

There is growing potential for both faba bean and soybean markets.

“Pulses in general are starting to gain some ground domestically because even if you’re gluten free or vegetarian, you can eat pulses,” said Bowness. “As well, fractioning, whereby a product is separated into protein, fibre and starch components for food additives, is growing too. Instead of using a cornstarch, it is absolutely possible for a food manufacturer to use a faba bean starch.”

Soybeans have faced a “chicken or egg scenario” — but that’s changing, said Fabian.

“People say they’ll grow them but they need a place to market them; the soybean industry said it can market them but it needs a critical threshold amount,” he said. “Now we’re seeing investment in the industry — a number of soybean-processing plants are being built in the province to handle the anticipated increase in acres.”

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“In the past few years, we’ve seen a lot of root disease issues, and I would say they’re primarily driven by environment,” said Michael Harding, research scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development.

“These conditions will slow down germination and emergence and give some of those soil-borne fungi a greater chance to cause problems.”

Early-season disease problems are primarily caused by soil-borne fungi that cause root rots, such as fusarium, rhizoctonia, pythium, and cochliobolus. These fungi are “present everywhere” in the province.

“There’s always something in the soil that could potentially cause some disease on crops that are developing and becoming established,” said Harding. “It’s always something to think about, and it’s always something to watch for.”

• From the Grainews website: Getting to the root of rot

The level of disease pressure from root rots is “situational,” depending largely on crop rotations, soil conditions, seeding management, and weather.

“If the environment is conducive to the disease, we can see lots of problems.”

And each fungus thrives in a different environment.

“You’ve got the triple combination punch of fusarium, pythium, and rhizoctonia,” he said.

“If it’s cool and wet, pythium’s going to have its way. If it’s cool and dry, rhizoctonia is going to fare a little better. If it’s warmer and drier, fusarium may be a bigger problem.”

“You’re probably never going to have a season where you won’t see any of these soil-borne fungi causing problems.”

Symptoms and management

The first thing producers will notice if root rots have taken hold in their field is a lack of emergence or a reduction in stand establishment, said Harding.

“Sometimes you’ll see patchy areas where the emergence just isn’t very good. You could start seeing that any time after the seedlings start coming up out of the ground.”

After that, producers should watch for poor stand establishment and post-emergent yellowing or stunting.

“They’re having a hard time pulling the moisture and nutrients out of the soil because of the attack on the root zone.”

At that point, there’s very little producers can do to manage the disease, he said.

“If the crop is already coming up out of the ground, it’s really too late to do much about what’s there. There’s no product you can apply now that’s going to help your root system recover.”

Managing root rots comes down to “avoidance and prevention,” using good crop rotations, proper seeding depth, high-vigour seed, adequate fertility, and seed treatment.

“Anything you can do to get the crop to come up out of the ground and get that seedling growing quickly will help you to avoid and prevent some of these root rot issues.”

Scouting critical

But producers shouldn’t skip scouting just because there are no post-emergent management options for root rots.

“There’s sometimes a tendency to use that as an excuse to not scout, but it is really important to get out there and scout.”

Scouting will show any problems that are emerging and whether management techniques are making the situation better or worse.

“Beginning early and frequently scouting can pay off by helping determine where these problem areas may be in your specific fields,” said Harding.

“It’s good to scout at the beginning of emergence when the crops are coming up so that you can watch the establishment and look for patches that aren’t coming up. You can start to see that very early on.”

Once a problem is identified, producers should consult with an agronomist to determine the likely cause, he said.

“At the early stages of crop development, there’s lots of things that can cause patchiness and stand establishment issues. It’s not just diseases.”

Things such as fertility, soil moisture, salinity, pH, and compaction can cause variation in emergence, making an accurate diagnosis essential for management.

“Every time we see some yellowing or poor stand establishment, it may not be a disease. It may be something else, and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

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