Gursahib Singh, research director of the Irrigation Crop Diversification Corp. (ICDC), presented to 200 members of the irrigation industry at the Irrigation Saskatchewan conference on Dec. 5 in Saskatoon.

Bacterial leaf streak is so far not a problem in Saskatchewan, but has been a growing problem in Alberta and the U.S. for the last decade.

The air- and seed-borne pathogen is mostly seen in irrigated crops, with no management practices or crop resistance available for Canadian cereals. Bactericides, copper and seed treatments do not have an effect, said Singh, who offered up the warning while outlining over 50 other research projects going on at ICDC.

Leaf streak often gets misdiagnosed and when farmers see it as a fungal infection, reaching for the fungicide isn’t going to help, he said.

“You are killing all the other saprophytes or other pathogens, and there is no competition left. You’re not killing bacteria, they’re the pathogen that is left and you are giving them every opportunity to invade the leaves or the crop.”

This increase in cases is fairly new, so Saskatchewan researchers are yet to start any extensive research, Singh said, but they are learning from researchers in Alberta and the U.S.

Singh said he and professor Randy Kutcher at the University of Saskatchewan are watching to see whether the problem crosses into the province.

Thomas Kelly Turkington, plant pathologist with the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Research and Development Centre at Lacombe, and Michael Harding, crop health assurance lead for Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation, are the leading experts on the disease in Alberta, Singh noted.

Minor cases of bacterial leaf streak have been recorded on the Prairies since 1920, but never as severe as what they are seeing right now, Harding said.

Strong annual increases of the disease have created economic losses in the U.S. Midwest and Plains since around 2012 and for southern Alberta irrigators starting in 2015, he said.

Three factors have to be ideal for the disease to thrive, he said. The pathogen must be present, with a susceptible host and the perfect weather conditions, and the potential is there for the problem to continue growing.

“Depending on those three sides of the disease triangle, that’s really going to determine what happens, but based on what we’ve seen happen in North America so far, it wouldn’t be that surprising if the disease became more prevalent and more severe in more fields across the Prairies.”

All wheat and barley crops grown on the Prairies are “extremely or fairly susceptible,” he said, but drought conditions have slowed the spread of disease. However, irrigation creates the proper moisture conditions for both growth and spread of the disease in these grass and cereal crops.

Spreading information on the signs of infection has been important for the Alberta irrigation community.

When seeing spots on leaves during scouting, most farmers diagnose the problem as cereal leaf spot, and more often they’re correct. This is why misdiagnoses are prevalent: farmers just don’t expect the leaf streak to be in their field. 

Telltale signs of bacterial leaf streak include a lesion on the third leaf down the midrib turning from yellow to a heavy bacterial ooze and black chafe on the head.

Letting the canopy dry between irrigation events can help slow the spread of the disease — but crops need water, Harding said, so if it’s a toss-up between spreading the disease and ensuring adequate water, growers are going to lose more yields from the latter than the former.

The best management practice farmers have in their toolbox right now is proper crop rotations, he said.

“If you can get a hold of seed that has little or non-detectable levels of bacteria, and you’ve got a two- to three-year break between cereal crops, you’re probably going to be breaking the cycle enough that this isn’t going to be a consistent problem.”

Even though no specific cultivar has built up any resistance or tolerance to the disease, the search has already begun to identify strains with which breeders can work, Harding said.

“We don’t really have a good answer for what cultivars have higher tolerance to this or what are more susceptible…that work has started and we will over time have those answers.”

– Becky Zimmer is a freelance journalist at Humboldt, Sask.

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Straxan fungicide

Corteva bills its cereal fungicide Straxan as “advanced protection against early-season diseases” including fusarium species, rhizoctonia and true loose smut. It combines three actives: difenoconazole, metalaxyl and tebuconazole.

Kirsten Ratzlaff, Corteva’s portfolio manager for seed-applied technologies and biologicals, says the product’s formulation “provides flexibility — both through commercial seed treaters and on-farm equipment — and stable application under varying conditions and temperatures.’’

Corteva says the formulation is also “highly compatible” for use with other seed treatment products such as its Lumivia CPL insecticide.

Talinor herbicide

Syngenta’s Talinor is a post-emergent herbicide billed for use against “difficult” broadleaf weeds, including herbicide-resistant weeds, in Prairie spring wheat, durum and barley.

The product is a premix liquid formulation of bicyclopyrone (Group 27) and bromoxynil (Group 6) for use on spring wheat, durum wheat, and barley with an application range from the two-leaf stage through to six-leaf three-tiller.

Rob Klewchuk, Syngenta’s technical lead for Western Canada, says bicyclopyrone in particular “will help growers proactively guard against weed resistance.”

Syngenta says the product can also be paired with a “wide list” of grass weed tank mix partners and will be available in “multiple” packaging sizes for 2024.

Oxbow herbicide

Nufarm’s first entry in its new Duplosan suite of cereal herbicides is Oxbow, to be available in the West for the 2024 growing season. The company said its researchers have “rediscovered” dichlorprop-p, a decades-old Group 4 active which was first used as an additive to 2,4-D but with unique properties that “largely remained unexplored.”

Oxbow combines that active with bromoxynil (Group 6) for use against broadleaf weeds such as herbicide-resistant kochia. 

 “Our researchers and agronomists challenged themselves to find a new path forward in managing resistant weeds in cereals that aren’t being managed by other herbicides,” Tyler Gullen, Nufarm’s technical services manager, said in a release..”With Oxbow, we are presenting the first novel Group 4 mode of action in nearly a decade.”

OnDeck herbicide

Earlier in 2023 Lee Hart reported on Corteva’s release of OnDeck, a post-emergent herbicide for use in spring and winter wheat, durum and barley in the brown soil zones of the Prairies.

OnDeck combines tolpyralate, a Group 27 herbicide developed by ISK Biosciences and new to the cereal market in the West, with bromoxynil (Group 6) for “a strong measure of control over key broadleaf weeds like kochia, wild mustard, wild buckwheat, and volunteer canola, as well as control of green and yellow foxtail.”

Tolpyralate, Corteva said, allows farmers to plant lentils, peas and canola the year after application, “maintaining the rotational freedom and flexibility that is important in the brown and dark brown soil zones of Western Canada.”

Yalos inoculant

Crop inputs distributor Winfield United will be handling sales of Lavie Bio’s inoculant seed treatment Yalos, which is being marketed in Canada with a particular focus on boosting yields in spring wheat, durum and barley in the Prairie provinces.

Yalos, formerly known as Thrivus, is a microbial-based inoculant sold as water-dispersible granules to be applied as a seed treatment. Initially marketed for use in spring wheat, Lavie Bio announced in November it would expand that to include barley and durum in 2024.

Lavie Bio says its trial data points to a “yield advantage of three to four bushels per acre” in wheat, durum and barley and a “four-to-one return on investment for farmers, given current market values.”

For a better idea of what the investment would be, a company representative put the cost of Yalos at $9.95 per acre, based on 100 pounds of seed. The agreement with Winfield United will make the product available in the West for the 2024 growing season.

Wave biostimulant

UPL in early 2023 picked up CFIA registration for Wave, a biostimulant using a liquid seaweed extract that “improves crops’ nutrient uptake, resulting in enhanced plant vigour, growth, and overall health. It also supports vital molecular and physiological processes within the plant, improving its ability to withstand abiotic stress.”

The product is meant for use across a “wide range” of crops, including wheat as well as canola, field peas, corn, soybeans, apples and grapes.

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That’s why the recent creation of the world’s first reference genome for oats is a significant step toward a more targeted approach to improving yield, disease tolerance and other characteristics.

Sequencing the oat genome is cause for optimism within the research community. Wubishet Bekele and Nicholas Tinker are two Canadian team members who took part in the work, alongside 31 researchers from 20 institutions in five countries.

Fully unraveling the oat genome took five years — in part because it is a unique and complex fusion of three sub-genomes.

The work has both scientific and practical applications.

“We sequenced, characterized and compared two oat genomes, plus two of their wild ancestors,” says Tinker, a research scientist from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Ottawa Research and Development Centre.

“We found parts of the chromosomes have been inverted or jumped over to other chromosomes and also that different oat varieties have different chromosome arrangements.”

These rearrangements are a natural process but oats seem to have tolerated it more than other species, which explains why the genome is so complicated. It also provides a roadmap to tame that complexity.

“Crosses between oats with different chromosome arrangements can have good or bad surprises,” says Tinker. “We now have tools and knowledge to avoid or anticipate those surprises.”

“We apply tools to assist in selection by predicting things that we can’t see,” adds Bekele, who is also a research scientist at AAFC in Ottawa.

“Breeding is painstakingly detailed work that distills tens of thousands of lines down to one or two cultivars over a 10- to 12-year cycle. We combine genomic information with performance data to develop predictive models that improve the speed and accuracy of that selection process.”

Having complete genome sequences allows researchers to better pinpoint traits and characteristics and begin to understand and predict the underlying genes and molecular processes.

“In addition to selecting progeny, we’re now trying to predict better parental combinations based on gene content and chromosomal configurations,” says Bekele. “This is the next level of improvement in genomics-assisted breeding, made possible by this new genomic resource.”

The sequencing provides well-timed good news for public-sector breeding, says Jeff Reid, general manager of SeCan.

“This is foundational to where we’re trying to go as a country. There should be no question as to whether oat breeding needs to be maintained or growing in terms of capacity.”

Reid refers to the “complicated puzzle” between government and producer funding groups, to figure out who will take responsibility for upstream foundational research versus closer-to-market testing. Will it be AAFC, the universities, industry or producers?

Who will participate in research for smaller and regional crops? And who will take responsibility for ensuring products reach the market in a way that’s available to every farmer in each region?

“When we talk about mapping the genome, that’s awesome,” says Reid. “That should help us to make much more rapid progress when we’re looking at introducing tools like gene editing.

“But that’s only going to help to tweak specific traits within a variety. In order to get the overall yield and general agronomic adaptation, there is no replacement for boots-on-the-ground testing and multi-location variety testing.”

Without making selections in the environment where a crop will be grown, it’s difficult to make progress.

“That’s really a key message that we’ve been trying to hammer home as we look to solve this puzzle,” says Reid. “This needs to happen on the ground where the crop is grown.”

– Ralph Pearce is a Glacier FarmMedia contributor.

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That about sums up the New Wheat Crop Report from Cereals Canada, released Nov. 21, describing what growers already knew: how below-average temperatures initially delayed seeding in the West, followed by a summer of above-average temperatures and below-average rainfall on the southwestern Prairies and an early harvest resulting in “highly variable” yields.

Once the crop was in the bin, however, the data showed:

• over 95 per cent of the CWRS (Canada Western Red Spring) crop grading No. 1 and No. 2, with average protein content;
• over 80 per cent of CWAD (Canada Western Amber Durum) grading No. 1 and No. 2, with protein content higher than average; and
• over 90 per cent of CPSR (Canada Prairie Spring Red) at No. 1 and No. 2, with average protein content.

Wheat ash content was found to be lower in 2023 in all classes, compared to 2022. “This translates to lower flour and semolina ash contents, allowing millers to optimize extraction when they mill Canadian wheat,” Cereals Canada said in its report.

In all, Canada produced 27.909 million tonnes of wheat plus 4.045 million tonnes of durum, for 31.954 million tonnes in total, down seven per cent from 2022 but “consistent with the five-year average.”

In Alberta, hard red spring wheat was estimated at 65.9 per cent grade No. 1 C.W. (Canada Western), while in Saskatchewan, 94 per cent of spring wheat and 82 per cent of durum wheat were estimated to be rated No. 1 and 2 C.W.

In Manitoba, spring wheat quality was rated 40 per cent “good” and 50 per cent “fair” in the province’s southwest and central regions; 60 per cent “good” and 30 per cent “fair” in the northwest; and 90 per cent “good” in the eastern and Interlake regions.

Winter wheat crops in Eastern Canada, meanwhile, generally went in under dry seeding conditions and a mild winter. “Despite early-season quality concerns and a delayed harvest in some areas due to persistent rain, the yields and quality of the Eastern Canadian crop exceeded expectations,” Cereals Canada said.

Overall, the region’s winter wheat-growing areas saw “strong yields and production paired with good quality ratings.”

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Total barley production across the Prairies was down by 10 per cent on the year, at 8.707 million tonnes, according to the CGC. Average barley yields were placed at 61.3 bushels per acre in Western Canada, which was down from 70.5 bu./ac. the previous year and the 10-year average of 66.4 bu./ac.

AAC Synergy was the most popular malting barley variety seeded in Western Canada, while the area seeded with CDC Copeland continued to decline. The popularity of newer varieties, such as AAC Connect, CDC Fraser and CDC Churchill, increased noticeably, according to the CGC.

The malting barley was generally of good quality, with average protein levels steady on the year at 12.3 per cent. That compares with the 10-year average of 11.9 per cent.

The average test weight was 65 kg/hL, which was lower than the previous year’s average (66.7 kg/hL) and the 10-year average (66.9 kg/hL). The average 1,000-kernel weight was 46.8 g, which is higher than last year’s average (45 g) and the 10-year average (45.7 g).

The newer varieties, such as AAC Connect, AAC Synergy, CDC Fraser and CDC Churchill that have kernels larger than AC Metcalfe and CDC Copeland, contributed to the overall high average kernel weight.

Soil moisture and precipitation were lacking in many areas through the growing season but a stretch of relatively cooler temperatures during a portion of July helped relieve some crop stress, as did haze from wildfire smoke, according to the report.

Harvest operations started relatively early in August, as crop development was ahead of normal across a good portion of the Prairies due to the hot and dry conditions throughout much of the season. Occasional rain in August did lead to some sprouting and prevented the harvest from being completed in a timely manner.

– Phil Franz-Warkentin is an associate editor/analyst with Glacier MarketsFarm in Winnipeg.

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FP Genetics

Durum: AAC Schrader is the first durum in the Canada Western Amber Durum class that is registered globally with an intermediate (I) resistance rating for fusarium head blight (FHB). Its robust, top-of-class disease package also features an R rating for stem, leaf and stripe rust and an MR rating for bunt. This high-yielding variety offers high grain protein, excellent standability and very good lodging resistance.

SeCan

CPSR: AAC Rimbey VB is a midge-tolerant variety best suited to the traditional CPS growing region. Compared to AAC Penhold, AAC Rimbey yields seven per cent more, matures one day earlier and grows nine centimetres taller. It has very good sprouting resistance and features an I rating for FHB and R rating for leaf, stem and stripe rust.

CWRW: AAC Coldfront winter wheat builds on the success of AAC Wildfire. It yields one to two per cent higher, matures earlier and has slightly shorter stronger straw than AAC Wildfire. AAC Coldfront has very good winter hardiness and features an MR rating for leaf rust, an R rating for stem and stripe rust and an I rating for FHB.  This new variety will be available as certified seed for summer/fall 2024.

Durum: CDC Vantta is a semi-dwarf, hollow stem Canada Western Amber Durum with dark black awns and very strong straw. CDC Vantta has high yellow grain pigment and superior pasta colour, giving it excellent end-use suitability. It has an R rating for leaf and stem rust, an I rating for stripe rust and a MS rating for FHB.

Barley: CDC Renegade is a two-row feed barley that is a dual fit for forage or grain. Compared to CDC Maverick, CDC Renegade yields 19 per cent higher and has a similar drought tolerance. This smooth-awned variety performs well on lighter soil or in dry conditions but will be prone to lodging under high moisture and heavy fertility.

SeedNet

Barley: AB Dram is the first non-glycosidic nitrile (non-GN) malting barley bred in Canada. This two-row, hulled barley has good malting potential and targets the distilling market. Malted grains that contain glycosidic nitrile can produce an ethyl carbamate, an undesirable trace component in distilled spirits or whisky. AB Dram, which yields the same as CDC Copeland and matures 1.5 days earlier, also features good lodging resistance and a good disease package. 

Stamp Seeds

Barley: CDC Renegade is a two-row smooth-awned barley with excellent forage and grain yields. This replacement for CDC Maverick has a good disease package featuring moderate resistance to stem rust and surface smut and intermediate resistance to spot-form net blotch.

– Mark Halsall is a freelance writer and editor and a former associate editor at Grainews. Reach Mark at halsall.mark@gmail.com.

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