stripe rust on wheat

Stripe rust alert in Alberta

Disease found in Oregon three weeks earlier than ever recorded

Alberta Agriculture plant pathologist Mike Harding has issued a bulletin noting that stripe rust alerts have been issued for Oregon and Montana. A Jan. 19 Capital Press story says stripe rust has been discovered in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Oregon State University plant pathologist Chris Mundt and three extension researchers issued an alert Jan. 19 informing […] Read more

Fusarium symptoms: The seed on the left is healthy; the seed on the right is infected with the fungal disease.

Resisting fusarium head blight

Plant breeders are making progress in developing wheat 
varieties that are resistant, but it’s a marathon, not a sprint

There’s been a lot of effort put into breeding fusarium-resistant varieties, Dr. Anita Brûlé-Babel told CropSphere delegates in Saskatoon in January. But developing cereal varieties resistant to fusarium head blight (FHB) is more like a marathon than a sprint. “There’s been a lot of breeding challenges. And I know a lot of farmers have been […] Read more


swathing canola

Crop rotation impacts canola yields

A new Ag Canada study finds that increasing the number of years in your rotation between canola crops can raise your average canola yields

Canola is one of the biggest crops in Canada and it’s only getting bigger. In the five years from 2008 to 2013 Canadian farmers went from growing 10 million to 18 million metric tonnes, nearly doubling the canola harvest. With market demand anticipated to only increase in years to come, driven by a rising global […] Read more

clubroot disease in canola

PCR tests for clubroot in canola

Early clubroot infection is difficult to detect with the naked eye. But a PCR test will do the job


Clubroot is an interesting disease. It is neither virus nor bacteria; it is not a plant or an animal. It is, in fact, a protist. What are protists? Protists are a large, diverse group of organisms; they are all eukaryotic (meaning their cells contain a nucleus and other organelles enclosed within membranes), and many are […] Read more


herbicide-sprayed flax field

Control the pasmo in your flax

Left untreated, the pasmo fungus can take five to seven bushels per acre from 
your flax yields. Luckily, farmers have effective fungicide options


Flax is an increasingly popular crop. With growing demand from Europe, the U.S. and China, flax is likely to stay in high demand (with attendant high prices) for the foreseeable future. It also produces a high profit per acre compared with grains and works well in crop rotations to break disease and pest cycles. While […] Read more

black chaff on wheat

Beating back black chaff

Black chaff can lower yields in your wheat field. Make sure your seed is disease free this spring


You’re out in your wheat field, inspecting your crop. It’s been a good season, a bit wet earlier in the year, but the plants are growing strong and it looks like you’ll have a good yield come autumn. Then you spot something odd — a bunch of the plants have leaves covered in dark stripes […] Read more


Green Barley Ears

A smut by any other name

Smut is one of the few diseases that’s not a hot button issue this winter. But true loose 
smut can cause headaches for barley growers. Here’s how to keep it out of your fields

Covered, loose, false, true, stinking, stem, common. Apparently, a smut exists for every occasion. Smut is a broad term that refers to a variety of fungal diseases that affect cereal grains on the Canadian prairies. Each smut is caused by a specific fungi which attacks a particular grain and produces slightly different effects. One thing all smuts have in common: […] Read more

fusarium-infected wheat head

Fusarium in the bin

A third of CWRS samples submitted to the 
CGC were downgraded due to fusarium. Now what?

Since the first major outbreak in Manitoba in 1993, fusarium head blight (FHB) has established itself in Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan and continues to move into western Saskatchewan, Alberta, and northern B.C. Farmers in some parts of the Prairies are now accustomed to dealing with the fungal disease and its dominant strain, F. graminearum, and […] Read more



alfalfa forage

Using alfalfa to solve pitfalls

When canola and wheat prices are falling, consider the benefits of alfalfa

Perennial legumes, especially alfalfa, bring benefits to a cropping system that can override initial concern many growers may have when it comes to the economics of the practice. Around the world, some countries are concerned about the lack of local available water for growing their own forage. “There is a growing trend for longer-term commitments […] Read more