This project will contribute to more efficient and sustainable weed management practices by optimizing canola genetics, plant stand densities and herbicide programs to achieve the above benefits.

Improving crop tolerance to drought is essential for maintaining yield stability under the continued threat of climate change and a key factor for achieving sustainability in agriculture by saving water resource usage. Molecular breeding focusing on monogenic transgenic intervention has so far achieved limited success in the development of drought tolerance in crops. This project focuses on a gene family that is the basis of quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting drought tolerance in Brassicaceae.

This project aims to help guide the effective use of cultivar resistance, which, when used in combination with other management practices will help mitigate the impact of blackleg on the Prairies.

Several clubroot-resistant canola cultivars have been developed in Canada, however the newly evolved Plasmodiophora brassicae pathotypes have overcome some of the resistances. The long-term objective of this project is to diversify the clubroot resistant genes in Canadian canola for clubroot resistance and develop molecular markers for these resistances.

This will accelerate the breeding of improved canola varieties as breeders from academia/government/industry use this service to phenotype larger breeding programs.

Aster leafhoppers are the main vector of Aster Yellows Phytoplasma (AYp) in the Canadian Prairies. AYp causes Aster Yellows (AY) disease in many plant species but can greatly affect canola in outbreak years.

Clubroot disease in canola and other brassicas is caused by the pathogen Plasmodiophora brassicae. Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan conducted a five-year study to identify and characterize effector proteins and their role in the establishment and progression of clubroot disease.

The uniformity of a spray deposit is fundamental to a successful spray application. Spray dosage is directly related to pesticide performance. The timely, accurate and efficient application of pesticides is an important activity in modern crop production methods.

Crop rotation is an important component to sustainable, healthy agroecosystems aiding in disease suppression, nutrient cycling and risk mitigation. In this study, researchers examined the agronomic impacts of crop rotation strategies including canola-canola; canola-wheat; and canola-pea-barley.

Researchers with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada recently completed the genetic mapping of the blackleg resistance gene Rlm11. Rlm11 is effective against the L. maculans isolates carrying the avirulence gene AvrLm11, which is found in 95 percent of L. maculans isolates collected from western Canadian canola farms.

Residue management is a significant challenge for producers on a year-to-year basis. Wheat and canola crops are often grown in rotation, and it is important to understand how wheat crop residue management can affect the emergence of canola in a rotation.

Researchers wanted to determine if canola meal could be a suitable protein source for beef cattle.

Crops that can readily exploit and utilize soil nutrients more efficiently require less fertilizer inputs, offsetting input costs and reducing potential losses to the environment.

Researchers wanted to continue the work to learn more about root microbiomes, identify the core microbiome in canola and in turn, improve fertilizer efficency in canola.

Canola cultivar was the most influential management variable on percent emergence and early growth rate, and also significantly impacted the spatial uniformity of emergence in this observational study.

A Saskatchewan Soil Health Assessment Protocol and Scoring Functions were successfully developed. This provides the foundation for developing tools that are capable of transforming a farmer’s routine soil test data into a Saskatchewan Soil Health Score.

Using green processing technologies, Saskatchewan-grown crops, such as camelina, canola, corn, flax and soybean oils can be incorporated into existing materials and manufacturing processes without the need for additional infrastructure.

Researchers initiated a two-year study in 2018 to determine the maximum safe rate of seed-placed P fertilizer with different opener widths and row spacing in canola; and to develop updated seed-placed P fertilizer guidelines for producers and crop advisors to use.

Lygus bugs are a sporadic pest of canola at the pod stage across parts of western Canada. In this four-year study, researchers were interested in validating the economic thresholds of lygus in commercial canola fields across western Canada.

The surveillance network identified a total of 157,407 arthropods of 418 species from 317 sampled areas in southern and central Alberta. Sampling by the surveillance network developed a geographically extensive database on the distribution and abundance of beneficial arthropods found in Canadian prairie croplands.