Grainswest - Winter 2024

Winter 2024 Grains West 38 P rairie farmers continue to deal effectively with grain diseases of all kinds. This is due to an efficient new variety pipeline, access to certified seed and a host of crop protection products and cultural practices. Reassuring as this is, farmers must remain vigilant in the fight against crop diseases such as Fusarium head blight, rust, bunt and smut. Likewise, researchers work to produce resistant varieties and create tools so farmers can curb incidence rates. Over the last 36 years, James Menzies has had much experience with grain disease on the Prairies. The federal plant pathologist at the Morden Research and Development Centre in southern Manitoba has focused his research on ergot in wheat, crown rust in oat and smut in small grain cereals. As long as farmers have grown grain in this region, they’ve contended with smut. However, it’s been largely under control for several generations. From the late 1800s until about the 1950s, smut devastated crops without much recourse. Losses of up to 75 per cent were regularly reported until science developed countermeasures. “The advent of resistant cultivars, fungicide seed treatment, certified seed; all of these factors working together means the smut pathogens don’t cause very much loss at all,” said Menzies. “I wouldn’t say cases of smut are uncommon, but it would be uncommon for them to cause greater than a trace loss in any cereal crop.” BY TREVOR BACQUE ENDANGERED SPECIES Vigilance and scientific advances tame two historically destructive crop diseases FEATURE Pictured here, covered smut invades a barley field. Once unstoppable, smut and bunt have become less common in cereal crops. Photo courtesy of AAFC.