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Canola Council of Canada

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• Scout for clubroot, harvest tips for thin canola

  Issues of the week: August 5, 2010 — Swathing has started for April-seeded fields. The ideal time to swath is 50% to 60% seed colour change on the main stem, so don’t rush. This week, we’ve got swathing tips for thin stands and a reminder for all late-season insect control and desiccation: Be Export Ready, [...]

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• Crop and weather updates:

  Peace (B.C. and Alberta): Swathing has begun in the earliest and thinnest crops in the dry western and central regions. Nice rains in the central region are welcome but too little too late for many crops. Canola in the east and north looks good. Alberta: Crops in the south look good and continue to get [...]

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• Quick Hitters:

  Pay attention to pre-harvest intervals. These intervals — the time between spraying and cutting or straight combining — are important because we don’t want pesticide residues on export canola. For example, lygus bug numbers are high on some early-seeded crops in the Peace and some of these crops are a week from swathing. The shortest [...]

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• How to scout for clubroot

  Visual symptoms of clubroot can be incorrectly attributed to heat stress or to diseases such as blackleg, fusarium wilt or sclerotinia. For that reason, proper diagnosis of clubroot should always include digging up plants to check for gall formation on roots. Start at field entrance. Pull up 10 random plants, remove the soil and examine roots for [...]

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• Should growers straight combine thin crop?

  Growers with thin crops are wondering whether straight combining is better than swathing. Straight combining tends to work best on thick stands with plants meshed together to prevent whipping in the wind. But thin stands are at risk of wind damage whether swathed or straight combined. When thin stands are swathed, often there isn’t enough [...]

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• 7 swathing tips for 2010

  1.    Scout for disease prior to swathing. Assess levels to determine if premature ripening or pod damage from alternaria black spot may necessitate swathing earlier than normal — before seed shatter starts. Fields with lots of diseased plants may also be poorer candidates for straight cutting due to the increased shattering risk. 2.    Hail damage can cause [...]

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• When to swath multi-stage crops

  Many fields in the rain-soaked regions have advanced crop on the high ground and much later crop in the low ground. These fields require some harvest planning. Does a grower swath the high ground first and the low ground a couple weeks later? That may be the best option as long as the low ground [...]

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• Coming events

  Canola Crop Walk, August 18 at Vulcan, Alta., with CCC agronomy specialist Troy Prosofsky and ACPC director Lee Markert. The walk starts at 8:30 and goes to noon. Click here for location and details. Preharvest/Late Summer Diagnostic Clinic at the Ian N. Morrison Research Farm in Carman, Man., Wednesday, August 18 from 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. [...]

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