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Agriculture ministry to conduct more extensive clubroot survey

EAST CENTRAL — The Ministry of Agriculture will be expanding its clubroot survey in areas where the disease is known to occur and in areas that were not included in the 2018 clubroot survey.
Clubroot
Photo by Government of Saskatchewan

EAST CENTRAL — The Ministry of Agriculture will be expanding its clubroot survey in areas where the disease is known to occur and in areas that were not included in the 2018 clubroot survey.

Clubroot is a soil-borne disease causes galls to form on the roots that starve the plant of nutrients, and so by doing that it causes premature ripening.

It is spread primarily by the redistribution of soil and if not managed, clubroot can cause significant yield losses in field crops such as canola, mustard, camelina and others

Last year about 1,500 fields were surveyed for clubroot, with the goal being 1,800 fields.

“This year the goal is higher than that because we’re going to look in a lot of these RMs where the disease has already been confirmed as well as expand this to areas where it’s not necessarily confirmed yet and areas where we didn’t survey last year,” said Kim Stonehouse, crops extension specialist with the Tisdale office of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Approximately 1,800 fields will be surveyed in 2019. Of these, 600 will be located in areas where clubroot or its pathogen are known to occur.  The other 1,200 fields will be surveyed in areas of the province that were not included in the 2018 extensive clubroot survey.

In addition, 850 soil testing kits will be made available to producers to test for the presence of the clubroot pathogen on their own farm.

This makes the total overall target for fields analyzed in 2019 to be 2650.

Stonehouse said the majority of townships in the region will be sampled, and it is expected to start in the region within the next couple of weeks.

The results of the 2019 clubroot survey and all reports of clubroot external to the survey will be used to update the Saskatchewan Clubroot Distribution Map. All specific land locations and producer information will be kept confidential and will only be shared with the appropriate RM when a clubroot-specific bylaw is enacted.

In addition, the Ministry has made available self-test kits at their regional offices. The cost of the testing for these kits are covered by SaskCanola, and are free for any producer to use.

“They pick up the kit and they can sample wherever they might have seen possible clubroot areas in their field,” Stonehouse said.

To date, there have been 43 canola fields in the province confirmed to have clubroot.

Stonehouse suspects that number will continue to grow.

“Before 2018 there was somewhere in the range of six to eight fields or something like that and now we’re up to 43. I suspect that number is going to grow quite drastically in the next little while because we’re getting more producers and agrologists that are reporting it when they find it.”

He credits part of the increase of the number of fields infected to producer awareness.

“Awareness has been a key and as more producers are more aware of the fact it can pretty much survive in any field, then there is definitely going to be more people looking for it. It’s out there, we know it’s out there – just how wide-spread it is we’re not completely positive.”

Symptoms of clubroot include infected roots with galls – swollen root tissues – that will initially appear white and fleshy. Later in the season they will start to decompose and appear rotten.

Above-ground symptoms include stunting, yellowing and premature ripening. While these symptoms may indicate the presence of a clubroot patch, it could also be associated with other diseases or adverse environmental conditions. Due to this, producers should examine the roots for galls.

“We encourage all producers to scout their canola fields for clubroot symptoms and implement proactive management and sanitation practices on their farm,” Stonehouse said. “When clubroot is found, we encourage producers to report the clubroot finding to the ministry.”