Sunflower growers in Manitoba are facing a familiar predicament this fall – fields with high levels of head rot and stem rot.
Although producers were just starting to harvest the crop last week in the Carman and Morden areas, sclerotinia head rot and stem rot are a concern across the province, especially in the Red River Valley, said Anastasia Kubinec, an oilseed specialist with Manitoba Agriculture.
“A few weeks ago, they were looking at 20 percent head rot. Some guys are not even wanting to go and look right now,” she said.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
“You can see a lot of stock breakage from the road – a combination of disease and wind. I think right now that the heads haven’t degraded enough that the seeds are falling on the ground.”
This will be the fourth year in a row that sclerotinia has been a substantial problem for sunflower growers in the province. The last year without head rot issues was 2006.
Wet conditions provided ideal conditions for the fungal disease in 2010 and previous years. But weather is only part of the story, Kubinec added.
Sunflower prices have been strong for the last few years and producers pushed their rotations to get the crop in the ground.
“(They are) maybe going on fields that didn’t have that four or five years (waiting time) since the last crop with sclerotinia,” she said.
The consistent issues with disease combined with slightly lower prices, may push Manitoba producers away from sunflowers in 2011.
“There has been talk of a few guys reducing their acreage the next couple of years and getting a better hold of their management,” Kubinec noted.
Although the incidence of head rot is most severe in the wetter Red River Valley, it’s also an issue in the southwestern corner of Manitoba.
Producers in that part of the province are wary about what they will discover when the sunflower harvest begins later this month, said Lionel Kaskiw, a crop production adviser for Manitoba Agriculture in Souris.
“Guys are concerned about how it’s going to look in the sample,” he said. “Heads have been falling apart.”
However, Blair Woods, a producer near Elgin, Man., has no time to worry about sclerotinia in his sunflower crop.
He was busy combining a half-section of flax last week and will deal with his sunflowers when the time comes. But he has noticed that a different nuisance has been attacking his sunflowers.
“I’m having more trouble with blackbird damage,” he said from his combine cab. “They’re thick right now. They’re doing a lot of damage.”
Flower facts
•The scientific name of sunflowers is Helianthus, Helia for sun and Anthus for flower
•The former Soviet Union grows the most sunflowers. It is the national flower of Russia
•The tallest sunflower on record was grown in the Netherlands, at 25′ 5.5″ in 1986
