PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, Man. – Fusarium is widespread in Manitoba oats, and
that is beginning to worry pig farmers.
Oat growers should watch for signs of fusarium, which produces toxins
that can put animals off their feed, said scientists and processors at
the Prairie Oat Growers Association annual meeting.
“It’s a problem we all have to be concerned about,” said Real Tetrault,
president of Emerson Milling.
Tests of oat hulls for the 2002 crop are showing about one part per
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million of fusarium infection, which is the most pig producers will
accept. In the 2001 crop, some samples showed up to five parts per
million.
Agriculture Canada tests have shown that oats can become infected with
various types of fusarium at about the same rate as wheat and barley.
Jennifer Mitchell-French, an Agriculture Canada cereal scientist, said
fusarium infection is hard to see in standing crops of oats because it
tends to infect only individual spikelets rather than the entire
panicle.
Scientists have also assumed that oats would not suffer as much as
other cereals because seeds are not clustered together like wheat and
barley seeds.
But researchers have found the disease easily resides in oats.
The type of fusarium, however, tends to be different, Mitchell-French
said. Wheat and barley tend to suffer most from fusarium graminearum,
but oats has found to be mainly affected by fusarium poae. Both produce
toxins that can be dangerous to cattle and pigs.
So far, fusarium levels have not been found high enough to render oats
unfit for cattle. Cattle can handle 10 or even more parts per million.
But pigs have a much lower threshold, and that’s the livestock that
most need oats.
Some evidence suggests that fusarium mainly adheres to the oat hull, so
if the hull is removed, the danger to livestock may be minimized.
But some producers use oat hulls as a feed additive, and that could be
a problem with a highly infected crop.
In the short term, researchers want to find out whether removing oat
hulls can minimize the fusarium problem.
And they want to know whether heat or steam can be used to kill
fusarium in harvested seed. Fusarium in oats is not generally
considered a problem for human consumption because the fungus and its
toxins are destroyed in the milling.
