Story Posted: January 04, 2012

Canola Watch: Farm shows, Clubroot sanitation tips, Crop Week

Topics for the month: Farm shows. Clubroot sanitation tips. New CCC booth at January farm shows. Canola Watch CCA exam now available. Canola Performance Trial data.

New CCC booth at January farm shows. The Canola Council of Canada and SaskCanola will be in a joint booth at the Crop Production Show in Saskatoon January 9-12. The CCC booth will be separate from the Manitoba Canola Growers Association booth at AgDays in Brandon January 17-19. And the CCC and Alberta Canola Producers Commission will share a booth at FarmTech in Edmonton January 24-26. Come talk with Canola Council of Canada agronomists and communications staff. New Canola Watch subscribers who sign up at the shows will be entered into a draw for an iPad 2. Existing subscribers may want to tell neighbors and colleagues about this opportunity.

Canola Watch CCA exam now available. Certified Crop Advisors have until January 23 to complete the Canola Watch 2011 CCA exam.

Clubroot sanitation. The Canola Council of Canada has a new Clubroot Sanitation Guide with machinery cleaning tips and steps to identify your risk. Copies will be available at the Canola Council of Canada and provincial canola association booths at CropWeek, AgDays and FarmTech this month. Articles in this edition of Canola Watch also cover the topic.

Canola Performance Trial data. Click here to download a PDF booklet with the Canola Performance Trial (CPT) canola variety comparison data for 2011. You can also pick up a printed copy at the CCC and provincial canola association booths at the farm shows this month.

Crop Week, Saskatoon, Jan. 9-12
The Western Canadian Crop Production Show is at Prairieland Park January 9-12. SaskCanola and the Canola Council of Canada will have a joint booth at Prairieland Park all week.

The SaskCanola Producer Conference and AGM is Thursday, January 12 from 8:30 to 4:00 in Ballroom B of the Saskatoon Inn. Speakers include:

• Venkata Vakulabharanam, oilseed specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, on Canola Trends in Saskatchewan.
• Greg Kostal, Kostal Ag Consulting, with his Canola Market Outlook.
• Les Nernberg, Canola Council of Canada, on After the Crush: Increasing Canola Demand Through Research and Promotion.
• Clint Jurke, Canola Council of Canada, on Clubroot and Its Spread: What Saskatchewan Canola Growers Can Do to Control the Disease.
• Hugh Beckie, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, on The Role of Canola in Weed Resistance.
• Franck Groeneweg, SaskCanola, on Canola Performance Trials 2011.
• Panel discussion on Science-based Solutions to Prevent Trade Barriers.

Click here to find the SaskCanola 2012 AGM Schedule of Events

Register early and enter to win Rider tickets. Saskatchewan canola growers who register for the conference and AGM before noon on Friday, January 6 will be entered into a draw for 4 Rider tickets to the 2012 SaskCanola Rider Game Day next July. Registrants must be at the meeting in order to be eligible for the Rider ticket draw. All pre-registrants will be welcomed to the meeting and lunch. There is no charge for the conference or lunch.

"Celebrating Canola Industry" Banquet, January 12. The program includes speakers from canola days gone by and a retirement tribute to CCC senior agronomy specialist Jim Bessel. Click here to register online, call 1-877-241-7044 or email info@saskcanola.com. Cocktail Reception at 5:30pm. Dinner at 6:30pm. Tickets are $45.

AgDays, Brandon, Jan. 17-19
AgDays is at the Keystone Centre in Brandon, Manitoba from January 17-19. Manitoba Canola Growers Association will host Canola Day on Tuesday, January 17. Presentations are that morning in Theatre 1. Speakers include:

• Derwyn Hammond & Kristen Phillips, Canola Council of Canada, on Crop Production, Ahead to 2015. Part of the message will include lessons learned in 2011 and how we can take this knowledge and apply it into future years. Kristen will also share results from the MCGA excess moisture survey from 2011.
• Mike Jubinville, ProFarmer Canada, with his Canola Market Update.
• Drew Lerner, World Weather Inc., on Manitoba Weather for 2012, What is the Forecast?

MCGA local food cooking demo. Tuesday, January 17 at noon in Theatre 2, the 2012 Manitoba Canola Growers Award of Excellence presents Chef MJ Feeke. The award-winning chef from Selkirk, Man., will demonstrate tips and techniques to make gluten free cooking delicious and healthy.

More market outlooks. Greg Kostal will offer his 2012 Grain Market Outlook on Tuesday afternoon, January 17 in Theatre 1. Thomas Mielke, executive director of Oil World in Hamburg, Germany, will speak Wednesday, January 18 at 9:30 a.m. on Global Supply, Demand and Price Outlook for Oilseeds and Products, with a focus on what this means for Canadian canola, flaxseed and soybeans.

FarmTech, Edmonton, January 24-26
FarmTech has moved to the Edmonton Expo Centre at Northlands. The agenda is packed with concurrent sessions on a wide variety of agronomy topics. Keynote speakers are General Rick Hillier on Leadership in Tough Times; Glen Hodgson, chief economist with the Conference Board of Canada; James Peck, U.K. farmer and Nuffield Scholar; and John Shmorhum, who will speak on farming in Ukraine. Comedian Gerry Dee will entertain at the FarmTech banquet January 25 at 7:30. Register by January 6 for early bird savings. Click here to register online.

You'll find many sessions useful to your farm. Here are a few canola-specific presentations:

• Rob Gulden, University of Manitoba., on Harvest Losses in Canola. Rob speaks Wednesday at 1:30pm in Room 3, and Thursday at 11:00am in Room 3.
• Murray Hartman, provincial oilseed specialist, Alberta Agriculture & Rural Development, on Canola Rotation Performance. Murray speaks Tuesday at 4:00pm in Room 1, and Wednesday at 1:30pm in Room 4.
• Dan Orchard, agronomy specialist, Canola Council of Canada, on Canola Agronomy to Maximize Profitability. Dan speaks Tuesday at 1:30pm in Room 1, and Thursday at 11:00am in Room 5.
• Rick Taillieu, grower relations & extension coordinator, Alberta Canola Producers Commission, on Twitter and Tech Tricks: Making the Most of Your Time Online. Rick speaks Tuesday at 11:00am in Room 3, and Wednesday at 1:30pm in Room 6.

Alberta Canola Producers Commission will holds its AGM Tuesday, January 24 during FarmTech.

Video preview. Click here for a video with FarmTech organizer Rick Taillieu who discusses what to expect at FarmTech 2012. Rick talks about the move to the EXPO Centre, highlights the concurrent speakers coming to Edmonton, and the various annual meetings and events that the host groups hold during FarmTech. If you haven't been to FarmTech before, this interview will give you an idea of what to expect.

Clubroot management: Equipment sanitation
The most common way to transfer soil from field to field is on farm machinery and vehicle tires. The CCC has a new guide with tips to clean equipment and prevent clubroot's spread. Click here for the full guide. The following article is a short summary of the guide. Visit www.clubroot.ca for general information on clubroot.

Assess your risk
The following questions will help determine the risk of clubroot spread to your farm, or from field to field within your farm. Your answers will help you decide how much sanitation you need and when to use it.

• Do you already have clubroot in at least one field? If yes, thorough sanitation between each field may be warranted.
• Have you purchased used equipment that may have originated in clubroot infested areas? (Here's the latest Alberta clubroot map.) If the equipment originates from a clubroot-infested area, make sure the equipment is sanitized before it comes to your farm.
• Has your equipment been used in fields in clubroot-infested areas? If so, it should be cleaned and disinfected before it comes back to your farm.
• Who has access to your land? Custom sprayers and seeders, oil and gas equipment and trucks, earth-moving and excavating machines, soil sampling trucks, fertilizer trucks, hunters, recreational vehicles and even agronomists can carry clubroot-infested soil on tires, machinery and shoes. Make sure they follow clubroot risk mitigation protocols.
• Do you use tillage? Tillage or any other farm practice that involves soil disturbance or results in frequent travel throughout a field will increase the risk of transporting clubroot-infested soil.

3 steps for equipment sanitation
Choosing a worksite. You should clean and disinfect the unit before leaving the field, and leave all contaminated soil in that field. A low-traffic grassed area near the field exit is an ideal place to sanitize equipment.

Step 1: Rough cleaning. Use a hand scraper, wire brush or compressed air to remove loose and clinging soil and crop debris from openers, tires and wheels, and the frame. This should remove at least 90% of the soil from the unit. Time required: 1-2 hours for a 40 foot cultivator. Larger pieces of equipment, tractors and double disk units may take longer.

	Step 1: Scraping and blowing can remove 90% of the soil on machinery.

Step 2: Fine cleaning. Use a pressure washer at 2,000 to 3,000 psi on all areas where soil can accumulate. Turbo nozzles are generally more effective at removing soil than regular nozzles. An industrial detergent may enhance the degree of soil removal. Steps 1 and 2 in combination should remove 99% of soil from the unit. Time required: 1-2 hours for a 40 foot cultivator. (2-4 hours total for steps 1 and 2.)

	Step 2: Pressure washing can remove another 9% of soil.

Step 3: Disinfection. Disinfect all openers, tires and wheels with a 1% bleach solution or surface disinfectant of equivalent strength. A 3-gallon backpack herbicide sprayer will work for this job. All areas should remain wet with the solution for 15 to 20 minutes. Step 3 alone is not effective. The first two steps are required if you plan to include the disinfection step. Time required: 2 hours or more. (Four hours or more for steps 1, 2 and 3.)

	Step 3: A 1% bleach solution will eradicate clubroot spores in cracks and crevices.

Recommendations for high risk areas
For growers in an area known to have clubroot, the following steps are recommended to reduce the risk of clubroot spread:

• Follow cleaning steps 1-3, or at least 1-2, above. This is especially important when leaving a field known to have clubroot. The more soil you clean from the unit and leave behind in the field, the more you reduce the risk of clubroot being spread.
• Work infested fields last. This reduces the risk of directly transferring contaminated soil from infested to non-infested fields and should have extra time to give drills and tillage equipment a thorough cleaning before being used again.
• Don't work fields when wet. Wheels caked in mud are that much harder to clean.
• Ensure custom operators and anyone else entering your fields follow sanitation protocols. Don't feel awkward about asking.
• Be responsible. Growers should tell local authorities and custom operators that clubroot has been discovered in their field. Some municipalities require this by law. In other areas, this is just a common courtesy. Consider posting "Do not enter" signs beside fields known to have clubroot.

Recommendations for low risk areas
For growers in areas where clubroot is not found:

• If in doubt, decontaminate. If using your own equipment and you know clubroot is not on your farm, decontamination may not be required.
• Ask custom operators, oil and gas company surveyors and anyone else entering your fields where they've been. Some of them cover wide geographic areas. If they have been in a clubroot-infested area, ask about their sanitation protocols and check that the machinery is clean.
• Make sure used equipment is clean. When buying used equipment, make sure it's clean before it leaves the auction site or the farm it comes from. Also check that the transport truck is clean. As a precaution, you may want to pressure wash the equipment again when it gets to your farm.

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