The canola disease has been found in the province before now, but never in plants in a farmer’s field
Bernie McClean is considering posting no hunting signs on his farm near Glaslyn, Sask., in the wake of a clubroot discovery in his crop district.
“I’m tempted to post everything from corner to corner. I don’t want a whole bunch of extra traffic on my land,” he said.
“I don’t mean to be alarming, but this is my livelihood.”
That is how one farmer is feeling after news broke that a field in northwestern Saskatchewan is heavily infested with the devastating soil-borne canola disease.
Read Also
Saskatchewan RM declines feedlot application, cites bylaws
Already facing some community pushback, a proposed 2,000-head cattle feedlot south of Swift Current, Sask., has been rejected for a municipal permit, partly over zoning concerns about the minimum distance from a residence.
The Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission is advising growers in crop district 9B to be extra vigilant in scouting for the disease.
This is not the first time clubroot has been found in the province. It was first detected in a soil sample from one of 30 randomly selected fields in the province’s 2008 clubroot survey.
As well, disease galls were found on the roots of plants in two Cargill research plots in 2011 in the rural municipalities of St. Louis and Aberdeen. Another positive soil sample was found in the RM of Biggar in 2012.
As a SaskCanola director, McClean has been in many meetings where clubroot has been discussed, so he wasn’t too surprised by the province’s first discovery of infected plants in a farmer’s field.
“I expected it sooner,” he said.
“Canola has been a lucrative crop for many producers, and some guys have been pushing the limits as far as rotations.”
He was once guilty of pushing rotations but is now waiting a minimum of three years between canola crops, which is one of the main recommendations for preventing the spread of clubroot.
Others include growing resistant varieties, minimizing soil movement between fields and controlling volunteer canola and other weeds of the canola family such as stinkweed, shepherds purse and wild mustard.
McClean is used to picking varieties best suited to his farm, but he is definitely going to consider growing clubroot resistant varieties in the future because he would be surprised if the clubroot infection is confined to one field in the district.
Clubroot was first detected in a field near Edmonton in 2003. It has since been found in more than 1,000 fields in Alberta.
The Canola Council of Canada advises producers to scout their fields, digging up plants in all areas of a field that show premature ripening and checking a few random plants at field entrances for galls on the roots. Before or during swathing is the best time to scout.
Errin Willenborg, research manager with SaskCanola, said the Saskatchewan farmer whose field was infected wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary.
“It’s our understanding that the grower was following management practices similar to others in the area,” she said.
Barb Ziesman, plant disease specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, said the province, SaskCanola and the canola council have developed a clubroot management plan to help the grower mitigate the spread of the disease on his farm and to protect his neighbours.
“We are working with that producer,” she said.
Ziesman said early detection gives producers the opportunity to manage the disease and prevent outbreaks.
Saskatchewan Agriculture will be conducting its annual canola disease survey this fall. Fields are randomly selected. If the farmer gives permission, soil at the entrance of the field will be collected and tested for clubroot spores.
