Coordination of a crop disease monitoring network for Western Canada

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Project Details

Pillars

Principal Investigators

Additional Investigators

Funders

Organization

Start Date

External Resources

SaskCanola summary

WGRF summary

WGRF final report

Key Result

Although this project is still in progress, it has already established a Prairie Crop Disease Monitoring Network that integrates existing disease monitoring and surveillance and reporting activities into an overall monitoring initiative for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Project Summary

Overview

Crop disease monitoring on the Canadian Prairies is a valuable way to collect data that represents the situation in commercial canola fields. This surveillance provides growers, extension staff, researchers, government agencies, and industry stakeholders with valuable pest distribution and severity information. These datasets enable improved integrated pest management decision-making and helps with setting research/funding priorities. It also provides a mechanism for proactive surveillance for new or invasive diseases, while identifying shifts in existing pathogens in relation to virulence and fungicide sensitivity. Annual crop disease monitoring is done in some provinces such as Saskatchewan and Manitoba, but not on all crops. Disease monitoring in Alberta has been largely project based, and thus has gaps in historical records for some crops. The information that it has generated is also not typically readily available to producers and industry. Therefore this project will utilize crop disease monitoring on the Canadian Prairies to improve disease management for canola industry members.

Objectives

This project aims to:

  1. Establish a Prairie Crop Disease Monitoring Network that integrates existing disease monitoring and surveillance and reporting activities into an overall monitoring initiative for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
  2. In conjunction with WGRF, develop a web-based platform similar to the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network to coordinate and harmonize monitoring of prairie-wide of disease prevalence and severity.
  3. Develop survey goals, protocols for scientific based survey and protocol for producers or consultant scouting focused protocol.
  4. Provide consistent (annual) Prairie-wide crop disease monitoring.
  5. Facilitate the development of GIS mapping capacity for disease surveillance results and;
  6. Provide training and resources to ensure sufficient expertise and capacity exist for adequate annual surveillance.

Related project: The Prairie Crop Disease Monitoring Network: Fostering further network development