The air is deceptively calm in Manitoba’s Red River Valley, now that the region’s spray planes are grounded or have flown off to cover the west.
The apparently excellent state of the canola crop gives away nothing of the menace that is lurking.
Within a few weeks, farmers in the valley will discover whether the recent torrential rains have allowed sclerotinia and other canola diseases to harm what could be a high value crop.
A taste of what may be to come is already bitter for farmers growing wheat. Leaf diseases and fusarium head blight damage have been seen across the region’s cereal crop fields.
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“There’s lots of disease, but you can’t see anything in canola yet,” said Ingrid Kristjanson, the Manitoba Agriculture farm production adviser in Morris.
Cereal leaf diseases and fusarium became evident everywhere after heavy rain two weeks ago, said Brian Jack of the Manitoba Agriculture Altona office.
“The guys didn’t know which way to turn sometimes,” said Jack.
Farmers found they often couldn’t book spray planes because so many fields needed to be sprayed at the same time.
Morris aerial applicator Peter Funk, who owns Dale Air Services Ltd., said farmers are now suffering for their good luck in the spring.
Perfect weather then meant that most crops were seeded on schedule, with no delays, over less than two weeks. The crops advanced in lock step, so when the rains came right at flowering time, creating a blanket of humid air, everyone needed spraying at the same time.
And because the soils were so wet, ground spray rigs couldn’t be used in most fields.
“We expected it was going to be a bad season because all the seeding got done in about 10 days,” said Funk.
“Whenever that happens, we know we’re going to have an extremely hectic time trying to keep up.”
The spray planes are gone now, not because the job got done but because the crops have advanced past the point that spraying can help.
“We couldn’t get everything done, unfortunately,” said Funk.
“Some of it just simply didn’t get done, and some was driven (by ground applicators) even though it was way too wet to drive.”
Cereal diseases show the most common infections quickly, but sclerotinia – the most severe canola scourge – will not reveal itself to any but the most discerning eyes.
Derwyn Hammond, a disease specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, said trained eyes can spot sclerotinia now, but most farmers will see it between podding and swathing time.
Sclerotinia spores in the soil infect the canola plant, creating a fungus that breaks into the stem. The damage makes the plant look prematurely bleached.
Infected plants will appear as white blemishes among green plants. If their stems are broken open, the black fungus can be found.
Hammond said this year’s high canola prices mean that farmers don’t want to see yield losses due to disease, so many spent the money for fungicide.
“With higher value crops, growers are more sensitive to any potential loss,” said Hammond. “It’s a little bit easier decision this year, because you don’t need to lose so much potential bushels to make it a good decision to spray.”
