Pulse School: Assessing the culprit(s) causing a root rot problem

by

For parts of Western Canada, the rain keeps on pouring.

Early wet conditions could be conducive to root rot problems in pulses.

Fortunately, for three of the four main culprits —rhyzoctonia, fusarium and pythium, the plants will generally grow through the vulnerable early seedling stage if a seed treatment has been applied, notes Robyne Bowness-Davidson, pulse research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lacombe, in this Pulse School video.

Unfortunately, the fourth — aphanomyces — is not controlled by a seed treatment and has become more common in recent years.

She explains how to diagnose root rot issues in this episode.

“My advice is to be out there and pulling up some plants. If you see some some necrosis, or some chlorosis, or yellowing of plants in the field, pull them up, take a look at the roots and see what’s going on,” says Bowness-Davidson.

“If it’s early seedling root rot that’s happening early in the season and you’ve used seed treatment, you might see some damage to the roots. But if it dries up, or if your seed treatments are working, or you’ve done everything else right, a lot of times they can grow through it.”

A root rot problem might also not make itself evident above ground until later in the season or when the soil dries up. By that time, it might be tough to diagnose the original cause as other diseases may have moved in, she notes.

Related:

Wake up with RealAgriculture

Subscribe to our daily newsletters to keep you up-to-date with our latest coverage every morning.

Wake up with RealAgriculture

Please register to read and comment.

Privacy Preference Center

Necessary

Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.

gdpr, __cfduid, PHPSESSID, wordpress_test_cookie, woocommerce_items_in_cart, woocommerce_cart_hash, wp_woocommerce_session, wordpress_logged_in, wordpress_sec, wp-settings, wp-settings-time, __cf_mob_redir, wordpress_cache, realag
__cfduid

Marketing

Measuring interactions with the ads on the domain.

__gads,fsk_ut_2317
IDE

Statistics

These are used to track user interaction and detect potential problems. These help us improve our services by providing analytical data on how users use this site.

_ga,_gid,_gat,_cb,_chartbeat2,_chartbeat4
_ga,_gid
metrics_token

Preferences

Preference cookies enable the website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.

chartdefaults, comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_author_url
JSESSIONID, _os_session,anonymous_votes,csrf-param,csrf-token,user,user-id,user-platform,intercom-session,intercom-lou,intercom-session
personalization_id, tfw_exp

 

Register for a RealAgriculture account to manage your Shortcut menu instead of the default.

Register