PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. — Moisture patterns are more important than history when predicting sclerotinia outbreaks.
This is a lesson learned from last year’s disease distribution, Clinton Jurke told the Disease and Weed Spray Clinic that the Saskatchewan agriculture ministry organized in Prince Albert, June 26.
The 2012 Saskatchewan canola crop had suffered up to 10 percent yield losses because of sclerotinia infections.
So when looking at the sclerotinia distribution map for 2012, one might have expected the disease to be a problem in the same areas in 2013.
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However, that is not what happened.
The same holds for this year. The 2013 map shows little sclerotinia, but that doesn’t mean the disease won’t be a problem.
“That is not quite the way that this disease works,” Jurke said.
“Sclerotinia is all about the moisture. It’s about how much moisture you’ve received leading up to and during flowering that will largely determine how much disease you see.”
He said soil must be saturated for a couple of weeks for sclerotia spores to produce the apothecia fruiting structures.
Many areas of the province are facing exactly these conditions.
Jurke said the moisture accumulation this year is more comparable to 2012 than last year, which was drier.
