The Prairie Pest Monitoring Network is a collaborative project. Monitoring data is released on a weekly basis when insect pests pose the greatest threat to crop yield.

Crop residues supply critically needed carbon (C) and nutrients to the soil. These residue-derived resources support plant growth and the formation of soil organic matter, a cornerstone of soil health.

Ultimately, this research will contribute to the momentum of canola nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) research that is aimed to inform and incorporate NUE traits into commercial canola breeding programs.

This project aims to contribute to the development of elite canola varieties that are resistant to pathogen infection for the betterment of the canola industry.

This project will examine the soil, rhizosphere, and root microorganisms that are recruited by canola plants under stress conditions. It will also result in the isolation by culture of microbes (or groups of microbes) that could help plants adapt to the changing conditions currently being experienced on the Canadian Prairies.

This study will provide canola farmers with the information required to determine when a two-pass program is warranted and economically viable.

This project will help improve canola production efficiency and improve the national and global competitiveness of the Canadian canola industry (in the long term).

The objective of this project was to utilize archived small-plot canola agronomic trial data and corresponding regional weather data to conduct a meta-analysis to examine the relationship between environmental conditions and canola emergence.

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 has the potential to open up plant breeding to a whole new way to identify germplasm variation in breeding programs.

This research is not only focus on determining the optimum amount of fat from off-grade canola seed supplementation to gestating beef cows, but the economic price point (taking into account prices of traditional feed sources and canola inclusion costs) when canola supplementation is most profitable.

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.