Most canola varieties come with an R rating, which isn’t as provocative as it sounds.
The R stands for resistant to blackleg, but the letter doesn’t tell growers much, and that’s a problem for Paul Saelhof, who farms near Watrous, Sask.
If Saelhof has a severe infection of blackleg, he probably would switch to another variety of canola because that variety might have a different genetic resistance to blackleg.
However, it’s hard to make such a choice when the only piece of information is a letter.
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“How do I make that choice to select a different variety? That information isn’t available,” said Saelhof, who spoke at the Canola Discovery Forum, a Canola Council of Canada agronomy conference held Oct. 25-27 in Winnipeg.
“It’s all just labeled ‘R.’ I can go to the next variety, and it’s got the same information.”
In other words, variety B of canola might have the same genetic resistance as variety A, which means Saelhof will get another year with severe blackleg problems.
The canola council and seed companies have recognized the deficiencies of the rating system and are doing something about it.
Clint Juke, lead agronomist with the canola council, said a new approach is in the works.
“We would like to use the … western Canadian canola/rapeseed registration committee … to decide upon a new classification system for blackleg resistance,” he said. “If we can provide growers with better labels, they should be able to make better decisions…. If you see blackleg on your variety (of canola), you need to choose something that has different resistance (to blackleg).”
Labelling clarity is needed because blackleg is on the rise in Western Canada. Canola is now grown every second year on thousands of farms and the tight rotations have exacerbated the risk of blackleg.
The canola industry is also working on a more sophisticated solution to blackleg and resistance.
“Take a piece of (crop) residue, send it to a lab and it will say this is the race (of blackleg). Therefore, you need to choose this type of variety,” Jurke said. “We’re really close (to the technology). We’re within a year or two.”
