July 31, 2019

Top 10 photos from the 'PALOOZAs

The Canola Council of Canada agronomy team worked with the provincial canola grower groups to organize canolaPALOOZA in Lacombe, Alberta, Sask CanolaPalooza in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and CROPS-A-PALOOZA in Carberry, Manitoba over the past few weeks. These are important engagement events to share canola best management practices and priorities with farmers and agronomists in a field setting.

The following 10 photos help describe some of the agronomy highlights from the three events.

This is from the Manitoba ‘Palooza site. The strip on the far left (with only a few canola plants) had no insecticide seed treatment – just the fungicide seed treatment. Seeding rate was 3 lb./ac. The strip to the right of that was all the same, but had insecticide seed treatment. The next two strips were seeded at 5 lb./ac. (no insecticide seed treatment on the left, insecticide seed treatment on the right.) Photo credit: Justine Cornelsen
‘Palooza plots for 2019 showed quite clearly the stand-reducing effects of seed-placed nitrogen and higher rates of seed-placed phosphorus. In this strip, which had one third of the fertilizer blend in the seed row, has two thinned rows and two completely missing rows! The recommendation is to put only a starter rate of phosphate (15 to 25 lb./ac.) in the seed row, if needed.
These strips demonstrated the value of strong blackleg resistance. Susceptible varieties (as shown on the left) can be taken down very early in the season.
These dioramas show how virulent clubroot spores can build up in a soil when canola is grown in short rotations – even if the canola is a clubroot-resistant variety. The white pellets represent a clubroot pathotype that is virulent to the CR variety (the variety doesn’t have resistance to that particular pathotype). Repeat use of CR canola can cause that pathotype to build up, basically breaking the CR trait for that field.
To promote clubroot biosecurity, boot washes were at the entrances to ‘Paloozas. Sask CanolaPalooza gave everyone booties (which they bought from Vetsource. Credit: Ellen Grueter
Marla Riekman with Manitoba Agriculture set up a demo at Alberta ‘Palooza to show how far high-speed tillage can move soil. Riekman filled a trench with yellow peas then passed over the area twice with a high-speed tillage tool. Karli Reimer, who took the photo, is standing at the farthest extent of pea spread – which is about 30 feet from the pea-trench, highlighted in yellow. This demonstrated the erosion potential of high-speed tillage and also its ability to move clubroot.
The harvest loss station used two bags of canola to represent the average canola harvest loss. 17,400,000 seeds per acre. If this motivates you to lower your harvest losses, read more.
This is a one-inch square of water sensitive paper. Attendees could place the paper beside a tiny weed as a test to see if the optical spray system WEEDit could see the weed. It saw this one. Read more on WEEDit.
At the BeGrainSafe exhibit, Rob Gobeil demonstrates how quickly a person can become trapped in grain, and the challenging rescue mission to extract them. Photo credit: Ellen Grueter
Podcast recording in action. Listen to the five Canola Watch podcasts recorded at ‘Palooza.
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