Canadian Farm News & Agriculture Real Estate - Farms, Ranches, Land For Sale | Farm Marketer. Staying Steps Ahead of Clubroot

Tom Ernst, Senior Research Associate at Corteva Agriscience, delivers clubroot information to growers during a recent field tour event in Lethbridge, AB

How much do you know about clubroot? Depending on where you farm, it might be an issue you are dealing with daily, or one you hope to never have to tackle. Either way, if you aren’t taking proactive steps to combat the disease, your canola operation is at risk, no matter where you farm in Western Canada.

For growers who are unfamiliar with clubroot, it is a serious soil-borne disease that causes galls to form on the roots of the canola plant. Initially found outside of Edmonton in 2004, clubroot has spread rapidly throughout Western Canada in recent years. While Alberta is home to the heaviest concentration of infected fields today, the disease can now be found across Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Since the outbreak of clubroot almost two decades ago, Corteva Agriscience has been on the front lines, helping farmers combat this potentially devastating disease. Corteva came out with the first clubroot resistant (CR) hybrid back in 2009, and the company has remained at the forefront of clubroot resistance research ever since.

Today, through its seed brands, Pioneer® brand and Brevant® seeds, Corteva offers the most CR trait packages in the industry with the most sources of clubroot resistance against predominant and new virulent pathotypes, which continue to be found each year.

Tom Ernst, a Senior Research Associate with Corteva Agriscience at its Edmonton Research Station, says Corteva helps canola growers stay ahead of the ever-evolving disease by continually advancing genetics.

“We want to have resistant hybrids that are effective against the diversity of the clubroot pathogen as we know it in Canada, so we breed resistance into our hybrids that are effective against the predominant pathotypes found in Western Canada, as well as the most virulent variants that might become the predominant pathotypes in the future,” explains Ernst.

Corteva’s approach to clubroot resistance is three-fold:

1) Having resistant hybrids that are effective against the known clubroot diversity.

2) Developing varied resistance to provide growers with rotational CR options.

3) Ensuring these rotational options are as durable as possible.

“Our strategy for durable rotation options is to deploy clubroot resistant gene stacks as often as possible in our hybrids, where you have multiple resistant genes in the same hybrid,” says Ernst. “This enables farmers to go from a hybrid that has CR gene 1 and 2 to a hybrid that has CR gene 3 and 4, extending their effective rotation by rotating genetics, but also ensuring those genetics are durable against multiple virulent pathotypes.”

For Corteva, breeding canola resistance to new pathotypes is a constant cycle that ensures growers always have the hybrid options they need to remain ahead of clubroot. And doing so requires significant investment from a research and development perspective – from sourcing germplasm to the significant effort it takes to integrate these resistant traits into an elite canola hybrid that will deliver high yield and quality.

To remain at the forefront of clubroot resistance research and technology, Corteva works closely with researchers at the University of Alberta.

“The University of Alberta collaboration allows us to stay in touch with what’s happening in terms of coverage and diversity when it comes to clubroot,” says Ernst. “It also provides access to isolated, virulent clubroot samples soon after they are discovered and pathotyped so we can start testing our new and existing clubroot hybrid packages against them immediately.”

When it comes to managing clubroot in your fields, Corteva recommends farmers follow guidance provided by the Canola Council of Canada. “Keep it low and keep it local are really the two pillars of clubroot management,” says Ernst.

‘Keep it low’ refers to keeping resting spores of clubroot in the soil as low as possible, whether that is through deployment or rotation of CR hybrids or taking a multi-year break from growing canola in an infected field. ‘Keep it local’ refers to preventing the movement of soil from infected fields to uninfected ones. Clubroot generates billions of spores in a single gall, so even trace amounts of soil from one field to the next can cause serious outbreaks.

The use of CR hybrids is not only recommended in regions where clubroot has already been found, it is especially important in areas where clubroot is just getting established.

“Early deployment of resistance is key,” says Ernst. “Planting hybrids with effective clubroot resistance greatly reduces the chance of disease occurring compared to a non-resistant variety. Proactively preventing disease helps avoid serious outbreaks or initial build-up of resting spores. If galls don’t form then very little resting spores would be produced, ultimately keeping clubroot spores low and minimizing any potentially introduced clubroot problem.”

Just as clubroot never rests, the work at Corteva to stay ahead of the disease doesn’t either. By testing new sources of resistance in the lab and in the field, researchers and experts like Tom work tirelessly to provide Canadian farmers with the tools and products they need to continue growing high-quality, high-yielding canola.

For more information about Corteva’s industry-leading clubroot resistant technologies, visit Corteva.ca or contact your local Pioneer Sales Representative or Brevant seeds retailer.