As we enter the heart of July and the back half of the 2025 growing season, producers are looking to protect their crops to help ensure they don’t lose any yield come harvest time. That’s especially the case for canola, as plants start heading towards full bloom and will start forming pods and seeds.
Taking care of them now is essential to sustaining yield and filling the combine hopper. In the latest Canola Watch from the Canola Council of Canada, agronomist Chris Manchur talks on a few key issues canola growers face; including Sclerotinia.
“Sclerotinia is one of our top 4 diseases I would say for canola and what's really interesting about this one is that it is so aggressive at a very critical period of time during flowering. So, one of our main methods we can control sclerotinia is through fungicides and we want to make sure that if we're choosing to use a fungicide, we use it at the correct timing as well as making sure do we actually need that fungicide or not, and really that's going to be a lot on the weather.”
Sclerotinia or Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is a fungal disease that causes white mold on the plants and essentially rots it away. As with most molds, sclerotinia requires colder, wet, and humid conditions in order to formulate. It is recommended to check your crops for sclerotinia if you have wetter conditions and apply a fungicide if it meets the economic threshold.
On the flip side, hot and dry conditions will limit the spread of sclerotinia, but they bring their own set of problems. With widespread drought conditions in the Prairies over the last few years, producers have had to battle with heat blast. Too much sun and hot weather will cause stress on the crops, not allowing them to reach their full potential. Manchur says although there is no way to control the weather, properly setting up your canola will help strengthen its ability to withstand the heat.
“A healthy canola plant is a happy canola plant, and when it has the appropriate nutrition and this includes you know, all those micronutrients, macronutrients and even water is a nutrient, then it can help prevent a lot of these extra stressors like heat stress and heat blasts. So, when we're thinking about, how do we prepare ourselves against this? First off, proper nutrition before we’re getting into these stages is really important.”
You can read the full Canola Watch released by the Canola Council of Canada down below. For more information surrounding sclerotinia or heat blast in canola, visit the Canola Council of Canada’s website.