Category: Canola School

It's a question people grapple with daily — is it better to be a generalist, with a knowledge on a great number of topics, or a specialist, who can talk with gumption about a specific field? The Canola Council of Canada has found a way to get the best of both worlds, with a group... Read More

You may notice some new information on canola seed bags this year — a label that lists what type of blackleg resistance the variety contains. We'll spare you all the quirky names and numbers for the actual genetic resistance, but Dilantha Fernando, with the University of Manitoba, says farmers can use the alphabetical designation of... Read More

Switch to longer rotations, reduce soil movement, grow resistant varieties — the list of keys to managing against clubroot disease has become familiar for many canola growers in Western Canada, but an Alberta farmer with years of experience farming with high clubroot concentrations has another piece of advice: don’t be afraid to talk about it.... Read More

When we think of canola, we think Western Canada. And there's no doubt that the prairies are the canola capital, but Meghan Moran, canola and edible bean specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, reminds us that there are still canola growers in Ontario, too. While the all-time high of 90,000... Read More

Researchers with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are in the process of identifying and describing a tiny midge species that was first confirmed in canola fields in parts of Western Canada last year. It's not swede midge, as was previously thought. This new species belongs to the same Contarinia genus, but is more robust, has hairier... Read More

Canola is a "cool" crop in more ways than one, including how it can have a role in mitigating climate change. "From the point of view of global warming or climate change, canola is different from other crops that we grow commonly, and that is that it produces a lot of residue for every seed... Read More

As clubroot disease spreads in Western Canadian soil, growers who have yet to see symptoms in their fields have a decision to make: when should they start growing varieties that are marketed as resistant to clubroot? "From the Canola Council's perspective, ideally, we all start growing clubroot-resistant varieties early. We take a proactive approach and... Read More

Which clubroot-resistant canola variety with herbicide tolerance trait X is the earliest maturing in your area? What about the highest-yielding blackleg resistant variety with herbicide trait Y? Every year the Canola Council of Canada administers the Canola Performance Trials — a third-party small plot and field scale evaluation of current canola varieties. The program is... Read More

With memories of combines getting stuck, high disease levels and all the problems that come with excess moisture fresh in many farmers' minds, the dry conditions through much of Western Canada in 2017 were a sharp reminder of why moisture conservation is fundamental to farming on the prairies. "One of the key learnings from this... Read More

Phosphorus is a critical nutrient in farming, but it has also received a lot of negative attention for the impact it can have on water quality. If we consider the path of a single phosphorus molecule, it probably originates in a rock formation in the U.S. or North Africa. From there it becomes fertilizer and... Read More