Farmers in central Alberta are urged to be on the lookout for a yield-crushing canola disease after one municipality in the region found record levels of clubroot in canola.
Leduc County has been carrying out ongoing inspections in 700 canola fields and found low to high levels of clubroot.
“It will be at an all-time high this year,” said agriculture fieldman Garett Broadbent.
The county has a strict protocol to manage the disease. So far inspectors have checked 500 fields and have found 80 infected at various levels. The infectious growths, or galls, on the roots have been as small as a pinkie finger to nearly as big as a fist. The last two years of wet, cool weather have worsened the problem.
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“It is very much water anwd weather dependent and how that land was managed and if a person has grown a resistant variety,” Broadbent said.
“We are seeing low, low levels of infection, although we have seen where people have not grown a resistant variety, we are seeing high, high levels of infection,” he said.
Resistant varieties can control the level of disease, but do not provide complete protection.
“The last couple weeks we have been visually able to observe the effects of this disease and we can’t qualify it right now in terms of a yield loss but when we start harvesting, we will be able to qualify it better,” Broadbent said.
The county placed clubroot on the agriculture pest act in 2007. Notices were issued to farmers with infected fields and they were banned from growing canola in the same place for five years, although this year they allowed a one in four year rotation.
County officials are tracking canola fields and if they find an incident of someone growing canola back to back or every second year and the infection level increases, they will prohibit the growth of canola.
In addition, the agriculture services board is working with producers, delivering small group meetings, larger presentations and education packages. They are also talking with seed and chemical companies to encourage longer rotations even when canola prices ae high.
“We are not naïve to canola being a major commodity crop for this area. We understand that, but we also understand the implications of how disease affects oilseeds and cereals,” said Broadbent.
To the west of Leduc in Parkland County, inspections are ongoing. Like many counties with a positive designation, the incidence is much lower than the Leduc municipality.
Two years ago, officials in Parkland found four infected fields, last year found 30 and so far this year they have found 15 confirmed cases, said Tanya Warren, who handles clubroot cases for the county.
They send confirmation of cases to farmers and provide production information from the Alberta Agriculture clubroot management plan.
“We are not issuing notices. We are trying to give them the opportunity to adapt rotations and management practices that would be more suitable to preventing further spread and lessen the chance they are going to have economic losses, ” she said.
Clubroot has been centred around the Edmonton area but three quarters of land in Newell County at Brooks were found with a low level of infection. The county has been on the lookout since 2007. Its five-year surveillance plan ends this year although it may continue assessments next year before switching to an alternate year inspection program, said fieldman Todd Green.
When yields were poor in the past they did not suspect clubroot because it was new, said Green.
The region has had more moisture than normal so the county has been working with farmers, the oil industr y, and irrigators to discuss the importance of clean equipment and not moving infected soil across the countryside.
“We have had really good success keeping the dirt where it is,” he said.
A larger survey starts in the last two weeks of August along the Highway 2 region in the centre of the province. Information is given to the province for its clubroot prevalence map to be released later this year, said Dan Orchard, an Alberta agronomist with the Canola Council of Canada.
Some areas may be at less risk because of the distance from Leduc, higher pH in the soil or drier weather.
“It is not well documented how all these fields got it, if it is the movement of equipment or soil erosion,” said Orchard. “It is not a pleasant disease at all. There is going to be a lot of it and it spreads with moisture.”
However, heavy moisture has also strengthened the plants so they look healthy at first glimpse. Assessors may not know the full impact on yields until mid September.
The government of Alberta’s clubroot management plan can be found on the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development ‘s website .
