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David Kaminski
- Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives |
| Farmscape for August 17, 2004 (Episode 1581)
The unusually cool summer weather conditions that have delayed crop development in Manitoba have also helped contain fusarium head blight infection in cereals.
Fusarium head blight is a fungal infection that can reduce crop yields and infect the grain with toxins that make it unsuitable for human or animal consumption.
The disease is especially prevalent in Manitoba's Red River Valley but it extends west into Eastern Saskatchewan.
David Kaminski, a plant pathologist with Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives says we don't yet have any harvested grain samples but field observations indicate there is fusarium out there this year but not alarming levels.
Clip-David Kaminski-Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives
The conditions that are favorable for infection are heat and humidity during flowering and I think everybody is noticing that this has not been a hot year in general.
Cooler conditions would mitigate against fusarium infection.
In fact there's a winter wheat breeder who says that 'a rule of thumb would be, when ever you have nights where the temperature is dropping below ten Celsius, that's ten above, it's unlikely that you'll see fusarium infection.
That's the reason that the winter wheat crop most often escapes infection although this year we have seen a couple of winter wheat fields with relatively high levels of infection.
Sometimes winter survival delays the maturity of the crop, delays when winter wheat is flowering and it might be flowering more in the time when a spring crop would be.
Most crops in Manitoba have now flowered and are beyond the point of vulnerability.
Kaminski says, compared with last year, there will be more fusarium in Manitoba this year but it isn't going to be as bad as it was in 2001.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.
*Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council |
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© Wonderworks Canada
2004 |
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