With Mountain View County stepping up efforts to ensure that clubroot doesn't find a home in the district, Alberta Agriculture says a new strain of the crop disease has been identified in the Edmonton area.
Alberta Ag officials are encouraging farmers across the province to practise preventative measures, including crop rotation and biosecurity.
“A new strain of clubroot has been found in a field in the Edmonton area that, according to testing to date, renders all current clubroot-resistant canola varieties ineffective,” Mike Harding, research scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, said in a release July 21. “However, in the vast majority of fields in Alberta the resistance has been holding strong.
“If you're using a variety that has resistance to the strain of clubroot in your field, are employing good cultural practices like a solid three to four year rotation out of clubroot susceptible crops, and are sanitizing equipment and using on-farm biosecurity to avoid spreading infested soil, you can prevent clubroot from becoming an unmanageable problem on an individual farm.”
Clubroot is a soil-borne disease affecting cruciferous crops like canola, mustard, and some vegetables. Examples have been found in Red Deer and Lacombe counties, but not in Mountain View County.
At its recent month meeting, the Mountain View County agricultural services board instructed administration to step up efforts to ensure equipment operators are keeping their vehicles clean of mud, dirt and other debris when entering the county.
MVC manager of agricultural services Jane Fulton says random inspections this spring and summer have uncovered no instances of clubroot in the municipality. Those inspections will be continuing throughout the growing season. In all, about 25 – 30 inspections will take place.
The inspections will be focused on field entrances, low areas, and any other risk areas identified within the field. Priority of inspections will be given to fields where inspectors notice canola which appears to be showing symptoms of clubroot such as wilting, stunting, yellowing and early maturity, and where recent earth moving, pipelines, drilling or service rigs have entered onto the land.
“If an infection is found, all canola fields which the farmer is know to be involved with shall be inspected, including rented land,” she said.
The county's equipment cleaning policy states, in part, that, “Mountain View County requires that any equipment brought in from outside the county will be cleaned and free of soil and debris prior to entry.”
For more information on clubroot, call the ag-info centre at 310-FARM (3276).
“When clubroot was first discovered in canola back in 2003, it was very concerning as it can be devastating and very difficult to manage,” says Harding. “That has certainly been borne out over the last decade as we've seen the disease spread especially in the central region of the province.”
