“It’s been an interesting growing season so far — from a very dry May to the central areas getting quite a bit of precipitation in June,” provincial crop specialist Mark Cutts said in a July 3 interview.

“In the areas that needed the moisture, the crops have definitely responded to the precipitation.

So hopefully, we can continue to get some moisture across the province as we move forward.”

A dry start to seeding on the heels of back-to-back drought years had many worried about yield before the growing season even got out of the gate. But two solid weeks of wet weather in much of the province has boosted crop growth, particularly in northern and central Alberta.

In the July 2 provincial crop report, almost 80 per cent of the crops in central Alberta were rated good to excellent, with that number climbing to 82 per cent in northeast Alberta and 88 per cent in the northwest — all significantly higher than both the five- and 10-year averages for those regions.

“We did start off dry, but certainly, June has been a wetter month in many areas of the province,” said Cutts.

“June is an important month for crop growth, so the fact that we did get moisture in June has taken crops that were suffering from the lack of moisture and has now given them the moisture that they’ll need to continue to develop throughout the growing season.”

But Mother Nature did not share her moisture bounty with all regions.

“In the areas that are still dry, the crops likely aren’t as good as they are in some of these other areas,” said Cutts.

In the Peace Region and southern Alberta, just over half of the crops are rated as good to excellent (52 per cent and 54 per cent respectively).

“Southern Alberta is certainly below the provincial average, as is the Peace Country,” said Cutts. “That, I think, reflects the moisture conditions. Southern Alberta and certain parts of the Peace have been on the drier side.”

In those regions, producers should try to put extra focus on catching problems in the crop before they start, helping maintain whatever yield and quality is already there.

“That’s one thing that producers can do — scout their crops,” said Cutts. “As we move forward and the plants continue to develop, you’ll want to be looking for things like disease and insects. Maybe there’s some disease or insects that are causing concerns, so scouting and managing them if necessary would be one way to ensure yield.”

Proper grain handling at harvest is another way to squeeze out a few extra bushels per acre and maintain quality, he added. That includes everything from choosing the right pre-harvest aids, timing harvest operations correctly, assessing harvest losses during combining, and storing the grain properly.

“Toward the end of the season, it’s just a matter of managing that crop at harvest time as best you can,” said Cutts.

For some producers, however, the damage may already be done.

“When we get moisture in June, the crops are still young enough that we should see a positive response to growth and yield in those areas,” said Cutts. “If moisture is the limiting factor, though, there’s not a whole lot that can be done. If you’re in an area where it’s been consistently dry and the crops are under extreme stress, there’s really not much you can do at that point.”

Those producers can expect to take a yield hit — but it’s too soon to say how much the impact might be.

“It’s hard to say where we’ll end up — we’ve still got a couple of months of growing season left — but certainly the moisture that’s been received will benefit crop growth and ultimately yield,” said Cutts.

“But for the areas that have started dry and remained dry, we can expect to see an impact on yield in those areas.”

The post Rain turns fortunes around for many, but not all appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

This high-tech whodunit has regulators scratching their heads to figure out how a known glyphosate-resistance gene from Monsanto got into an unknown variety of wheat hundreds of kilometres from the nearest test site.

And to make matters even more confounding, the find comes nearly 20 years after the last known test using the gene in question.

How the gene got where it was found last summer has been much on the minds of staff at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the body leading the investigation.

“It’s a very good question, and one that we have asked ourselves,” David Bailey, director of the agency’s plant production division, said in a media briefing.

Monsanto Canada, which was developing glyphosate-tolerant GM wheat in the late 1990s and early 2000s in partnership with Agriculture Canada, is co-operating with CFIA, but the company hasn’t been able to independently verify CFIA’s findings, said spokesperson Trish Jordan.

What’s odd is the specific GM trait (called an ‘event’ in biotech lingo) that CFIA found was dropped by Monsanto in 2000 in favour of other ‘events’ it planned to commercialize, Jordan said.

“It is an event we did field trial research on,” she said. “But the last time we did any research on the germplasm that we were given, which was a hard red spring wheat, was 2000. How do you get six or seven wheat plants showing up in 2017?

“It doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t happen through cross-pollination. It shouldn’t happen by windblown pollen. It’s just not in the right spot.”

CFIA is just as puzzled.

“The field trials for these were done many hundreds of kilometres away from the discovery site and many years ago so there is no relationship between that given field trial and this particular discovery and this particular location,” Bailey said. “I cannot speculate further in terms of where it may have originated.”

Noticed and tested

The process leading to the discovery began last summer. A commercial herbicide applicator reported wheat plants along an access in southern Alberta had survived a glyphosate treatment. Provincial scientists grew new seedlings for those plants and confirmed they were indeed resistant to glyphosate. The province then notified the CFIA, and its laboratory tests again confirmed the wheat was genetically modified.

With assistance from Monsanto, CFIA was able to conclusively determine that the Alberta GM wheat is not a genetic match to previous unapproved GM wheat releases in the U.S. (in Oregon in 2013, and Montana and Washington in 2014 and 2016, respectively).

“These incidents involved GM wheat lines that are genetically different from the GM wheat found in Alberta,” the CFIA report says. “There is no evidence linking Canada’s GM wheat finding to previous United States cases. Similar to Canada’s finding, GM wheat cases in the United States were isolated incidents, and GM wheat did not enter commerce.”

Unknown origin

It’s also strange that while CFIA has a genetic “fingerprint” of the Alberta GM wheat, it doesn’t know its name.

“The GM wheat has a genetic background that does not match any currently registered wheat in Canada,” Heather Shearer, CFIA’s acting national manager of plant biosafety, told reporters.

“Between the CFIA and the CGC (Canadian Grain Commission), we have approximately 450 wheat varieties on file. This is not a match for any of those 450 wheat varieties.”

The wheats Monsanto experimented with in Canada were AAFC varieties, said Jordon, adding AAFC was also adding Monsanto’s glyphosate-resistance gene to its own wheats. In either case CFIA would know the names of those wheats and could identify them.

The answer could be simpler than it first seems. The unknown wheat is likely an obscure variety Monsanto was working with in the early stages of developing Roundup Ready wheat, said Rene Van Acker, a weed scientist at the University of Guelph who has experimented with Roundup Ready wheat. The variety was Bobwhite, developed by CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) in Mexico.

However, a Canadian Grain Commission official says the mystery wheat is not Bobwhite.

It’s also unlikely Monsanto’s gene outcrossed because gene pollen is heavy and doesn’t go far, wheat is self-pollinating and Monsanto did an excellent job of monitoring its Roundup Ready wheat trials, Van Acker said.

Not knowing how this GM wheat got to where it was found is a concern, said the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, an opponent of genetic engineering.

“We’re relieved this is an isolated contamination case but we’re concerned that the government couldn’t determine how it happened,” network spokesperson Lucy Sharratt said in a news release. “Without knowing the cause, contamination could happen again.”

The post Where did GM wheat found in Alberta come from? appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“When it works great, it’s amazing. But when there’s complications, it’s extremely frustrating — just like any piece of technology,” the Eckville-area producer said in an interview last month.

“Yesterday, I was literally out fighting a frozen water line that had drained the battery, and I had 180 animals that hadn’t had a drink yet.

“It posed a bit of a challenge for a cold Tuesday morning.”

Hoven has been using alternative watering systems for more than 20 years, and made the move to solar waterers in 1997 because of some remote locations in his pasture land.

“It gives us better control,” said Hoven, who now has three solar waterers.

“We can put the water where we want to, instead of only having one or two locations that they have to graze around. The solar waterers help us get our grazing management a step above what we could do without them.

“It gives you the freedom to better manage your grazing.”

• Read more: When the herd is a province away, you need reliable water

Despite some of the challenges with solar waterers (particularly in the winter), the technology has moved “leaps and bounds forward” in recent years, says Marvin Jackson, owner of Sundog Solar. And that “changes how a producer can manage his land.”

“We’re constantly being pushed to do more with less, and solar water pumping helps to do that,” said Jackson.

“It will make you much more competitive in the marketplace, through decreased time for management, increased herd health, and increased rate of gain.

“That all boils down to increased efficiency and profitability.”

Right sizing equipment

But in order to get the job done right, the system needs to be designed both in size and with appropriate equipment to match your specific needs.

“The system does need to be sized properly, just the same as a grain farmer would size his tractor,” said Jackson. “We have to match what the actual producer needs on how many sites for how large a herd. But it’s often overlooked.”

Hoven’s advice? “Buy a system that’s bigger than what you need.

“Don’t just say, ‘I think this tiny system will do my herd,’” he said. “There’s nothing worse than when it’s 35 above and your pump can’t keep up with the demands of your cattle.”

Producers need to do their research and make sure “it’s going to work within their operations,” said Hoven. That means getting a big enough tank and reserve for the right level of storage capacity, and big enough panels to power the pump.

“You need to plan for how much capacity you’re going to need on the hottest day of the year,” he said. “You might only get that circumstance once every 10 years, but if you don’t have that capacity, it’s going to be a problem.

“As soon as the tank goes dry, the cows start getting aggressive.”

And ultimately, you get what you pay for, Hoven added.

“If you buy cheap equipment, you’re going to have more problems than if you had a bigger capital expense in the beginning,” he said.

“You can cheap out a bit, but you’re not going to be as efficient because it won’t work as well.”

Plan for worst case

Producers don’t need to make a huge upfront investment, said Jackson. But solar watering should be just one part of an overarching long-term water management plan.

“Quality water solar pumping is not really new,” said Jackson. “Most people just don’t put enough time into a plan as they should.”

Plans don’t need to be “in depth or engineered,” he said.

“If they mark on a blank piece of paper the land they have and the water they use now, and then mark how it would change if they had water in a different location, they can think about how to best meet in the middle on that criteria,” said Jackson.

Water management plans would have helped many more cattle producers weather the drought seen in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan this summer, Jackson added.

“This past summer, I talked to a lot of producers who were stressed to the max that they didn’t have water for their cattle,” he said.

“I strongly feel that if producers had a water management plan where they planned for the worst-case scenario, I would not have talked to as many stressed producers who were in panic mode long after they should have been.”

And by incorporating solar watering systems into that overall plan — rather than simply relying on them in a crisis — producers can respond quickly to watering challenges as they crop up.

“In the past, solar water systems have been looked at as a bit of a band-aid when there’s either way too much water and things are muddy or when there’s a drought and producers need a quick fix,” said Jackson.

“If people approach it as part of having a water plan, it makes your life much less stressful.”

The post Solar watering can save stress during droughts appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“Most of the time when it comes to assessing what soil nutrient levels might be like, typically what you can do is look at your yields,” said provincial crop specialist Mark Cutts.

“Depending on where you are in the province and what your yields are, that will definitely have an impact on what’s in the soil from a residual standpoint.”

Areas where yields were below normal — like in southern Alberta — will likely see higher nutrient levels in their soil, and vice versa where yields were above average.

“In southern Alberta, the yields were roughly 75 per cent of the five-year average, so there’s a 25 per cent decline in yield compared to normal. That tells me there should be some nutrients left in the soil,” said Cutts.

“In southern Alberta where it was drier, the warm, dry conditions obviously impacted yield, so what’s there for nutrients is definitely worth investigating.

“Central Alberta was somewhere around average, so if you applied fertilizer for your crops based on average yield, you should be in the ballpark. Up in the northeast, northwest, and the Peace, their yields are a little bit above average, so nutrients may be lower.”

That quick analysis will work in a pinch, he said, but ultimately, a soil test will give you a more reliable sense of how much nutrients are left in the soil.

“Doing a soil test and getting the actual nutrient levels is better,” said Cutts.

“Ideally — and it never works out perfectly — if you can match up the crop requirements to what’s being supplied by the soil and what’s being supplied by fertilizer, you could be a little more confident that you’re getting close to what that crop is going to require.”

By soil testing this fall, producers can start to figure out their fertilizer programs for next spring — potentially taking advantage of some cost savings along the way.

“If you can get the soil samples collected this fall, get the analysis back, and make your fertilizer plan, there’s typically an economic benefit of purchasing fertilizer at this time of the year versus paying spring prices,” said Cutts.

Across the western Prairies, nitrogen prices have reached lows not seen in over a decade.

“One retailer I talked to said it was the cheapest nitrogen prices in 15 years,” said Dan Mazier, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.

Prices also seem to be softer for phosphate, though not nearly to the same extent as nitrogen, he said.

Having a good canola crop this year has helped sharpen attention on fertilizer, he said.

“Everybody is doing their best to get those nutrients back into the system before spring seeding.”

Figuring out exactly how much nutrients your soil actually needs is worth the $20 to $25 price of the soil test, Cutts added.

“It’s a good idea to get an idea of what’s in the system and make your fertilizer blends from there,” he said. “If you don’t soil test and just make some assumptions that nutrient levels are normal, then potentially you’re putting some fertilizer in that you don’t need to.

“Any time you’re potentially putting down more fertilizer than what you need for next year’s crop, there’s an economic component — you’re spending money on nutrients that you don’t necessarily need.”

— With files from Commodity News Service Canada

The post Balance your soil nutrient budget this fall through soil testing appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“The positive returns for the cow-calf producers over the last few years indicate the Alberta cow herd has finally stopped shrinking,” said Herman Simons, a farm business management specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry. “In fact, the total beef cow numbers for 2016 show a small increase of about 13,500 head as compared to 2011.”

The largest reduction in cows since the 2006 census inventory was in the Edmonton-Calgary corridor in 2011.

“Since then, this region has rebounded somewhat while the northeast and the west have continued to shrink in total head of cows,” said Simons. “The southern region (all counties below Calgary) seems to have rebounded the best — however, this region also saw the lowest reduction in numbers. The south had a reduction of 48,000 head in 2011, as compared to 2006, which is ‘only’ an 11 per cent reduction as compared to most of the rest of Alberta, which saw cow herds reduce between 28 and 37 per cent in the same period.”

It is welcome seeing some stability, and even a minimum amount of growth, he said.

“All regions (other than the west and northeast) have seen an increase of cow numbers since 2011. Most of that occurred in the south (an eight per cent increase from 2011) and the east (a five per cent increase from 2011).”

At the same time, he says, the number of farms is reducing.

“This decline seems to be faster for the beef sector in Alberta as compared to the average of all Canadian farms. There was a reduction of just over 10 per cent of Alberta cow-calf producers in 2016 from 2011, as compared to the Canadian average of about six per cent for the same period for all farmers.”

This reduction in the number of farms means herds are getting larger. In the last 15 years, the average herd size has increased by 50 per cent (to 95 cows per farm versus 63 cows). There is a large difference between the different counties. Larger farms are found in the counties of Ranchland No. 66 (average herd size of 231 cows), Special Areas 2 and 4 (173 and 194 head respectively) and Cardston County (170 head). The counties with the smallest average herd size are Mackenzie (34 head), Strathcona (40 head), Fairview (52 head), Lamont and Sturgeon counties (54 head each).

Cows are also moving away from their traditional areas, said Simons.

“For instance, the counties along the Highway 2 corridor between Edmonton and Calgary have seen a drop of close to 40 per cent in the number of cows since 2001, when almost 500,000 head were grazing in this region, to just over 300,000 in 2016. High land value and improved crop revenue are likely to have played major roles in this.”

Southern Alberta seems to be an exception to this trend as cow numbers have rebounded to pre-BSE levels of about 398,000 head and are almost at 404,000 head in 2016.

“The current challenges related to the bovine tuberculosis (TB) issue are not included in these numbers, as TB became an issue after the census data was collected,” said Simons. “The counties of Cardston and Cypress are notable as the cow herd increased from 2001 levels by about 12,500 head to just over 107,500 total in 2016. With almost 62,000 beef cows, Cypress County had the highest numbers in Alberta in 2016.”

Eastern Alberta has mostly recovered in cow numbers as well. The region, which had about 374,000 head in 2001, is back up to just over 371,000 in 2016.

“The only other region, other than southern Alberta, that has seen an increase in cow numbers is the Peace, likely due to lower land values and the availability of more marginal land. Cow numbers there have increased by about 15 per cent from 2001 to about 123,000.”

Profitability is the driving force in herd numbers, but there are other factors at play, Simons added.

“Grassland is competing with crop production and it seems that where good productive dryland is available cows are slowly moving away as that grassland is converted into crop. These animals are instead moved towards areas where there is more low cost, marginal land that is more suitable for grass and forage production than for crop.”

The post Alberta cattle numbers are no longer falling — but herds are on the move appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

There is a lot of hype surrounding supplemental micronutrients right now, said Ross McKenzie, a retired agronomy research scientist. However, not all micronutrients are created equally; some of the most crucial micronutrients — such as copper, manganese, zinc and iron — are already abundantly available in most soil in the province.

“Micronutrient fertilizers are often emphasized beyond their true significance,” said McKenzie. “A farmer might get a recommendation for two or three micronutrients. It may not seem like a lot of money at first but if the total cost is $15 per acre and a farmer has 5,000 acres, suddenly that becomes very significant. And if it isn’t returning any yield benefit and you’re spending this money, that’s the biggest concern.”

Some fields in central Alberta might be deficient in copper for growing cereals, and zinc deficiency can be an issue when growing dry beans on some irrigated fields with sandy soil in the south. But those are rare instances, said McKenzie, who worked as a provincial agronomist for 38 years, primarily in fertilizer and agronomy research.

More often, micronutrient trials done in the province — such as boron applied to canola — find little, if any, benefit, he added.

• Read more: Get the facts before spending big money on micronutrients

Alberta research

Before trying micronutrients, do your homework.

This starts with soil testing followed by a “skilful interpretation” of the results. If you get a recommendation for a micronutrient, consider doing some comparative on-farm replicated strip testing to determine the benefit on your farm, he said.

Crops require 16 essential elements in order to grow properly. These include macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulphur) and micronutrients (boron, chlorine, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc).

The term micronutrient doesn’t mean these elements are less important — just that only small amounts are required for plant growth. And rarely are they in short supply in this province.

“As a general rule we do not have widespread micronutrient problems,” said McKenzie. “We have 25 million acres in Alberta that are cropped annually. With copper, for example, we have probably a million acres that would fall under the category of being deficient periodically when wheat or barley are grown. But that’s one million acres out of 25, so it’s a relatively small percentage.

“Those tend to be on soils in central and north-central Alberta or either the black or grey in colour or the grey-black transition soil zones. These soils will almost always be sandy and often they tend to have a low soil test for copper. It’s only really the cereal crops that would show some copper deficiency, so wheat and barley would be the two crops we’d be most concerned about on those soil types.”

As for zinc deficiency, growers mostly have that in hand.

“We identified a deficiency of zinc in the late 1980s in southern Alberta but only on sandy, irrigated soils or farms that were growing dry beans under irrigation, especially in spring in cooler-weather soils. Most bean growers now put on a small amount of zinc just to make sure they don’t run into a deficiency.”

Boron overblown

One micronutrient receiving a lot of attention lately is boron as a canola supplement. However, McKenzie said there is little scientific evidence that supplemental boron makes any difference.

“We know that canola is more prone to boron deficiency, but we did a lot of work in southern Alberta over the years with a number of crops — including canola — and even with very low soil tests we could never get a response to boron. There’s been work done in Lacombe and other places and very rarely do we see responses to boron with canola.”

McKenzie attributes this push on boron to enthusiastic micronutrient salespeople.

“This summer even the Canola Council of Canada was promoting it in one of its newsletters to help reduce heat stress and promote seed set in canola,” he said. “However, that’s based on extremely limited research in Ontario.

“In Alberta, we had heat stress but those fields also had drought or moisture stress. If you don’t have water, putting on a little bit of boron isn’t going to make up for severe moisture stress.”

He is similarly skeptical about claims being made about chlorine. While he said there have been studies touting the benefits of chlorine in certain circumstances, he wonders if farmers could get equally good results by changing their cropping practices.

“There was some good work done in Alberta in the late ’80s with chlorine and its benefit for reducing root rot in barley, but in many cases a farmer would be better off just using better crop rotations rather than grow barley on barley on barley and then develop root rot,” he said.

The post Proceed with caution when it comes to micronutrients, says agronomist appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Harvey rapidly strengthened in the 12-hour period leading up to landfall and came ashore as a borderline Category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 210 kilometres per hour. It wasn’t the winds that ended up being the problem with this system, but rather the rains.

Hurricanes and tropical storms typically bring with them copious amounts of rain. Totals will often be in the 100- to 200-millimetre range with amounts sometimes pushing into the 300- to 400-millimetre range. What helps to determine just how much rain will fall is the speed that the system moves through. Typically, these systems pick up speed as they travel northwards and get picked up by the mid-latitude westerlies. This helps to limit just how much rain can fall on any given area.

This didn’t happen with Harvey.

Instead of picking up speed as Harvey moved inland, the mid- and upper-level steering currents around it collapsed, which essentially caused Harvey to stop moving. This set up the perfect conditions for a major history-making rain event to develop over southern and eastern Texas.

With Harvey stalled out right near the coast, it was still able to tap into the huge amounts of moisture over the Gulf of Mexico and pump it inland. Computer models, which did a very good job of predicting rainfall totals early on, predicted some regions would see as much as 1,250 millimetres of rain. In fact, an area east of Houston received 51.88 inches or 1,317 millimetres. That’s right, more than 1.3 metres of rain!

That beat the U.S. record of 1,220 millimetres of rain that fell from Tropical Storm Amelia in 1978.

The chart above shows some of the earlier rainfall totals measured over the Saturday and Sunday time period around the Houston region.

Let’s try to put these values into some kind of perspective (see charts below).

Total yearly rainfall for Winnipeg is on average about 500 millimetres, for Calgary it is around 400 millimetres. The largest single rain event that I know of was the 325 millimetres of rain that fell in High River over a 48-hour period in June of 2013. This was part of the historic flooding that occurred across parts of southern Alberta in that year.

Trying to dig out multi-day rain events is tough to do. Here is a list of single-day record rainfalls for the main centres I use across the Prairies followed by the largest monthly total rainfalls ever recorded. (Data source: Environment Canada.)

From this you can see that we really have no idea just how much rain fell across Texas from Harvey. There are places that received — in just one 24-hour period — three times more rain than we have seen in a record wet month!

The post There are extreme rains, and then the deluge caused by Harvey appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

And sometimes, she said, “it’s nice to be right.”

“Root rot severity was definitely lower in 2015 compared to what we had seen in 2013 and 2014, which were very wet years,” the federal research scientist said at Agronomy Update in mid-January.

In 2013, researchers began “extensive surveys” across the province for pea root rots and found two major culprits for the disease — aphanomyces and fusarium.

“Aphanomyces root rot is more predominant in the central area of Alberta, particularly in the Black soil zone,” said Chatterton.

“Fusarium root rot is more predominant in southern Alberta in the Brown and Dark Brown soil zones.”

Both diseases can cause severe damage to root systems in pulse crops such as peas, lentils, and some varieties of dry bean. And the economic losses can be devastating.

Using a rating scale of 1 to 7 (where 1 means healthy and 7 means dead), researchers scored over 170 fields in Alberta and found a significant increase in root rots from 2013.

“In 2014, we found a prevalence of 100 per cent, meaning that every field we went into, we could find an instance of root rot,” said Chatterton, adding the average severity in the province was 3.2, or moderate.

In central Alberta, aphanomyces were the big problem in 2014 — Chatterton found the pathogen in 77 out of 174 fields.

“In the Black soil zones, aphanomyces were present in about 66 to 84 per cent of the fields,” said Chatterton. “The Dark Brown soil zone had an average disease severity of about 3.5 — that moderate category — but only 37 per cent of the fields in the Dark Brown soil zone were positive for aphanomyces.

“In the Brown soil zones, there was a fairly high disease severity of about 3.2, but even less of those fields were positive for aphanomyces — only about 18 per cent.”

But 2015 was a different story altogether.

“We still found a prevalence of about 100 per cent, so again, every field we went into, we could find root rot, but severity was lower, at about 2.8,” said Chatterton.

“There were no fields in 2015 that had that severity of 6 or 7. Things looked a lot healthier.”

Risk factors

In almost all cases, the root rots developed after rain events, said Chatterton.

“The end of June was really dry, but some areas had some rainfall in early July, and you could start to see some yellowing patches popping up in the field,” she said.

“Soil moisture is very important for aphanomyces. The spores can start hatching in dry conditions, but they won’t infect.”

And because of that, soil compaction is “another big risk factor.”

“Generally, clay soils with about 30 to 40 per cent clay content that are more prone to waterlogging are going to have more of a disease issue.”

Aphanomyces also like soils with a pH in the 5.6 to 6.6 range and at temperatures of 20 C to 24 C.

“That’s why we usually start seeing these root rots popping up toward the end of June and into July when your soil temperatures have warmed up.”

But the biggest risk factor is crop history.

Aphanomyces can survive in the soil for five to 10 years, so even with a good crop rotation, farmers face some risk.

“Once you’ve had about four to five cropping cycles with susceptible hosts in a field, that’s usually when we see aphanomyces root rot can become a problem,” said Chatterton, adding less susceptible crops like fababeans, soybeans, and chickpeas provide good alternatives for the rotation.

But while aphanomyces are so far limited to pea crops in central and northern Alberta, that could change as other susceptible pulse crops gain traction in the south.

“We did find about 18 to 30 per cent positive fields in southern Alberta,” said Chatterton.

“So far, the root rot problem is confined to peas, but as lentil acreage starts to increase and maybe starts to be rotated with peas, it does have potential to cause a lot of damage in lentils.”

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