Recipe for Clubroot Management

When combined, like ingredients in a recipe, the following practices will help growers to limit clubroot damage in canola, allowing for the continued success and profitability of canola production across the Prairies.

1. Vigilantly scout all canola fields for symptoms, even when growing a Clubroot Resistant variety.
2. Keep a minimum 2-year break between canola crops, longer if possible. Crop rotation is crucial in preventing disease and pests and in the stewardship of genetic resistance. With a 2-year break between clubroot hosts, we see a rapid decline in living resting spores.
3. Seed Clubroot Resistant varieties and understand if/when to deploy different sources of Clubroot Resistance. Planting Clubroot Resistant varieties before the disease arrives and gets established will give you a better chance of keeping the resting spore load at a manageable level and maintaining effective resistance. Rotation of resistance genes could also be important to maintain resistance efficacy. With repeated use of varieties with the same resistant traits under high spore loads, virulent races can multiply and the effectiveness of resistance will be seriously compromised. Read about how that happens.
4. Limit activities that can introduce foreign soil or cause erosion. Minimum tillage and equipment sanitation (as simple as knocking off visible dirt before leaving a field) will greatly reduce the risk of moving infested soil around. Note that wet soil conditions increase the amount of soil that clings to equipment.
5. Control host weeds. Common weeds that can host clubroot include stinkweed, shepherd’s purse, flixweed, all mustards, and volunteer canola. They must be controlled within three weeks of emergence to prevent a new batch of spores from being produced.
6. Isolate field entrances and hot spots. Use patch management strategies to reduce spore loads, such as grassing the affected area, which will also limit soil movement. Patches that are visibly worse than the remainder of your field often have billions more spores per gram of soil than elsewhere and are often the first place where clubroot resistance breaks down. Removing these hot spots from cultivation for a few extra years significantly reduces the spread and risk of resistance breakdown. As part of this, having separate field entrances and exits could reduce the amount of infested soil leaving the field on machinery.
7. Scout for Clubroot. Symptoms of the disease are most noticeable late in the season, and can still be seen during and after harvest on plant roots. Producers are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with clubroot symptoms and start scouting before the galls degrade. If galls are degrading they will look brown and peaty and may fall off when plants are pulled from the ground. Scout heavy traffic areas (entrances, exploration, gas wells, etc), low areas/water runs, and areas where dust/snow tends to drift and settle. It is good practice to pull plants and examine roots whenever you are looking at later-stage canola as the disease could show up anywhere.

• Original Article: https://www.canolacouncil.org/canola-watch/2019/09/11/clubroot-update-with-recipe-for-clubroot-management/

Organization Highlight

Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Partnership

The Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP) supports the country’s continued innovation, growth, and prosperity. This 5‐year (2023-2028), $3.5 billion investment by federal, provincial, and territorial governments strengthens competitiveness, innovation, and resiliency of the agriculture, agri-food, and agri‐based products sector. This includes $1 billion in federal programs and activities and $2.5 billion in cost-shared programs and activities by federal, provincial, and territorial governments.

The Sustainable CAP framework represents a cost-shared federal-provincial investment of $508 million over 5 years for programs and services for the agriculture and agri-food industry in Alberta and positions the industry for greater long-term success.

Alberta’s Sustainable CAP programs will continue to stimulate the creation of new jobs and spur growth in the agriculture sector by:

• supporting value-added processing competitiveness, attraction of new investment, and expansion of irrigation capacity that will enhance crop production
• protecting plant and animal health and animal welfare, managing risks to our natural resources, and investing in producer-led agriculture research

In addition, a new Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program will help increase the resiliency of agricultural landscapes. Producers will be able access funding to accelerate the adoption of beneficial management practices that maximize the provision of ecological goods and services, through carbon sequestration and enhancing climate resilience.

Avian Influenza

Weed Watch

Field Bindweed / Convolvulus arvensis

Legislative Designation: 

Noxious- must be controlled

Key ID Features: 

Funnel-shaped, white to pinkish flowers, stems up to 3 meters long, trailing or climbing with numerous shoots. Deep taproot and extensive creeping root system. Arrowhead-shaped leaves. 

Frequently Found: 

Headlands and fencelines in areas of full sun

Control Methods: 

Hand-pull, cultivation frequently. An assortment of broadleaf herbicides prior to seed set. 

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