Staff from Wheatland County’s Agriculture and Environment department will be touring the county, randomly visiting canola fields in search of clubroot. This month county staff will be conducting clubroot surveys.
To do this, staff pull and inspect the roots of canola crops. As the survey has just started today, it is unclear how long the process will take, but Russ Muenchrath, Manager of Agriculture and Environment for Wheatland County explains that the process can take between one or two weeks to complete.
He said that there is a fairly limited time frame that they are doing the surveying.
“We’re just starting the survey today just as canola is being swathed. Generally, you try to do the survey within a few days of the canola being swathed. Clubroot is a declared pest under the Agricultural Pests Act, which we enforce,” he said.
Muenchrath explained that clubroot is a soil-born disease. That means the disease spreads through the soil, or from soil found on equipment that is moved from one field to another.
“It affects primarily the roots. That’s what we are looking for. We pull the plant up and inspect the roots, and if the plants are infected with clubroot, the roots will have galls on them, which are kind of like big swelling on the roots which affect the nutrient and moisture on the plants,” he said.
“If there is a crop that is infected, it could have yield reductions, or outright the plant not surviving. It’s primarily yield reductions,” he explained.
Muenchrath noted that so far county staff have not found clubroot in Wheatland County yet.
“That’s part of the reason we are surveying, if we do find a place, we want to take action to help prevent its spread,” he said. Clubroot can be found in central and northern Alberta communities like the Edmonton region.
He noted that people can contact the county to help formulate a plan of action on how to deal with clubroot. But that many farmers are themselves regularly checking their fields for pests.
“The big thing is rotating our of clubroot so growing other crops for a number of years to help break that cycle, so you switch to crops like wheat, barley, peas or some other crop to help break that cycle of continually developing spores in soil,” he said.
He noted Wheatland County’s agricultural staff are always open to phone calls from the community.
