I was reading a release the other day from Cereals Canada about its annual New Crop Trade and Technical Missions initiative, and what jumped off the page was how well-respected our wheat is around the world. Quoting what they heard from purchasers of Canadian wheat, the release says customers refer to Canadian Western Red Spring as the “gold standard” of wheat and an anchor in their wheat blends. It also says Canadian Western Amber Durum has been called the “Ferrari” of durum wheat. This is high praise indeed for Western Canada’s largest crop, of which we export approximately 75 per cent ..read more

Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYVD) affects a wide range of grass hosts including wheat, oats and barley with oats being considered the most susceptible crop. In some regions of the province, BYDV has been reported as having a significant negative impact on oat yields. The primary symptoms of BYDV include stunting and yellowing, reddening or purpling of the leaf tips. BYDV is often confused with nutrient deficiency or other environmental causes, or other virus diseases such as wheat spindle streak mosaic virus or soil-borne wheat mosaic virus. Identifying viral pathogens is very difficult and re ..read more

Stubborn and persistent weeds like Canada fleabane can severely damage a soybean crop, impacting yields and bottom lines. Fortunately, soybean growers have a variety of tools to combat Canada fleabane and other challenging weeds like waterhemp, and the industry is constantly working toward research and development of new products and solutions. In a recent webinar, hosted by Top Crop Manager and presented by Bayer Crop Science and DEKALB seed, Kurtis Pilkington, Technical Solutions Agronomist and Tyler Sabelli, Agronomic Solutions Advisor, detailed how the Roundup Ready® Xt ..read more

Hybrid varieties of canola are widely grown on the Prairies, but their yield response to N fertilizer has not been recently updated, especially as newer, higher yielding hybrids are introduced to the marketplace. A research study was conducted across Canada to investigate hybrid canola yield response and N use efficiency (NUE) to N fertilization and to determine site-specific economic optimum N rates (EONR). A four-year field trial led by Bao-luo Ma at the Ottawa Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, was conducted at each site from 2018 through 2022. The sites wer ..read more

Growing Degree Days (GDDs) can be a helpful tool to track cereal crop growth and development. GDDs are calculated by adding the average daily temperatures during the cereal crop’s growing season. If the daily average temperature is equal to or less than 0˚C, the degree-day value is zero and no GDDs were accumulated for that day. Tracking GDDs during the growing season can be a helpful tool in estimating how quickly the winter wheat crop is moving through the growth stages, equipping producers to make timely fertilizer and crop protection applications. During cooler temperatures GDD accumulati ..read more

RDAR is investing $2 million to relaunch the Field Crop Development Centre (FCDC) as a new not-for-profit corporation, named Western Crop Innovations (WCI). WCI will focus on barley breeding and agronomy research. “It’s an exciting time for crop research in Alberta,” says RJ Sigurdson, minister of Agriculture and Irrigation. “Western Crop Innovations will carry on the Field Crop Development Centre’s substantial legacy, ensuring its work is addressing in a timely manner the issues farmers are facing in the fields.” WCI will form partnerships with industry in crop and livestock sectors to ensur ..read more

Michelle Hubbard is a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at Swift Current, Sask. At the Top Crop Summit on Feb. 27-28 in Saskatoon, she shared results from a 2023 survey of commercial chickpea fields. She discussed past and on-going trials that study the impacts of the herbicide metribuzin and drought, interactions of drought, chickpea variety and Ascochyta blight, interactions between soils in which symptomatic or asymptomatic chickpea have grown and the impact of drought on chickpea health and metabolites. An emerging chickpea health issue was identified in 2019 in sou ..read more

FP Genetics and SeedNet have announced a collaboration to help streamline production and distribution and expand access to their hybrid fall rye retail networks to such varieties as SU Cossani and SU Performer. This collaboration allows SeedNet to focus on delivering high-quality seed, while FP Genetics takes the lead in marketing and market development activities.    FP Genetics’ CEO, Chris Churko, acknowledges the journey both companies have undertaken. “Since 2015, our companies have been on parallel paths as we have learned how well hybrid fall rye fits growers’ needs in Western ..read more

Soil health is at the foundation of sustainable agricultural production. Yet, despite the importance of soil health to farmers and consumers, few methods exist to measure soil health or to establish a baseline for measuring improvement or degradation of soil health on a regional basis. A research project in Alberta is working to develop a better understanding of soil health and create a provincial database of physical, biological and chemical soil health indicators.  “The project was developed because there was a lack of information on soil physical and biological functionality. To asses ..read more

Farmers in Saskatchewan are being asked to share data from their Pessi/Metos weather stations to help improve the mapping tool that shows Fusarium head blight (FHB) risk. The University of Manitoba (U of M) in partnership with Alberta Grains, Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission (Sask Wheat), Saskatchewan Barley Development Commission (SaskBarley), Manitoba Crop Alliance (MCA) and the provincial governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, continues to offer free public access to the mapping tool that shows the level of risk for FH) disease in wheat, durum and b ..read more