Crop Management
Alberta Agriculture crop researchers continue to be encouraged by dryland winter pea and winter lentil crop trials. Pulse crops research agrologist Mark Olson said data from the first two years of trials found that winter peas outyielded spring-seeded peas by up to 40 percent. Researchers are still calculating data from the third year. Windham and […] Read more
Crop Management
Winter peas promising in Alberta crop trials
Western Producer Crop Report – for Aug. 4, 2011
MANITOBA SOUTHWEST Winter wheat above average Showers and non-scorching conditions helped southwestern crops advance well. Late seeded cereals are tillering and going into the flag leaf stage, while earlier seeded crops are heading. Considerable amounts of greenfeed were seeded by farmers looking for something to do with their land, and these crops are in the […] Read more
Greater crop diversity builds resilience
Can we weather climate change? On the Prairies we have come to expect a certain amount of drought, a recurring cycle of grasshoppers, markets that vanish, prices that plummet and now in some places croplands replaced with stands of cattails. Will we make it to next year country? Researchers define resilience as a system’s ability […] Read more
Benefits abound with open market: U.S. wheat leader
Canadian and American wheat producers stand to benefit from the elimination of single desk grain marketing in Western Canada, says the head of an influential U.S. wheat growers organization. Alan Tracy, president of the U.S. Wheat Associates, said the elimination of single desk marketing will result in higher prices for Canadian farmers, clearer market signals […] Read more
Prairie heat wave advances crops
Farmers often fear a mid-summer heat wave, but the one that recently passed through Western Canada was just what the doctor ordered. Crops have shot ahead, catching up much of the distance they had fallen behind normal development. “It’s pushed crop development forward, which is good,” said Bruce Burnett, head of the Canadian Wheat Board’s […] Read more
Sequencing wheat genome presents daunting task for international research team
Plant scientists from the University of Saskatchewan will play a key role in an international effort aimed at sequencing the wheat genome. U of S wheat breeders Curtis Pozniak and Pierre Hucl will lead a Canadian team responsible for sequencing a portion of the genome known as chromosome 6D. The Canadian project, Canadian Triticum Advancement […] Read more
Rhizoctonia spurs new seed treatment
SPOKANE, Wash. — Soil borne pathogens are a particularly insidious problem for grain farmers because they are so hard to spot. Producers can only see the results of an infestation. “What you can’t see can hurt you,” says Melody Melzer, a researcher at the University of Guelph. “And sometimes you just have to look a […] Read more
Getting a grip on mud
They are optimistically known as mudders, and until recently we had little use for this class of tire. The casing is the first important building block of any tire. In the case of light truck tires, there is no point in being cheap and buying a passenger car tire. With the rim sizes and load […] Read more
Weed of the Week: Canada thistle
Creeping thistle, as it is known in some parts of Europe, is best known on the Prairies as the perennial Canada thistle. This unwelcome European immigrant makes its way through the fields of western Canada by seed and root. Thistle patches might start from a seed, but the colonies often form from root buds that […] Read more
Don’t be scared of the dark, spray trials show
There aren’t many downsides to spraying at night, according to a researcher and a farmer who regularly sprays after dark. Bob Blackshaw, a research scientist with Agriculture Canada, has compared the results of spraying barley, peas and camelina during day and night and found no significant differences in weed kill related to the timing of […] Read more
