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August 6, 2025 - Soil-Borne Struggles

Clubroot dynamics in canola crops.

We cannot control mother nature and her mood swings throughout the growing season. Those swings can lead to heat stress and drought damage, or alternatively excess fungus and rot contributed from a surplus of rain. But we can learn to observe our crops' needs. Understanding the optimal conditions for your crop is key to boosting yield outputs. 

When temperatures range from 28-30°C during the day and only cool to 16°C or higher at night, the plants become susceptible to heat stress. The canola plant is unable to have a recovery period leading to the inability to continue growing flowers or aborting them completely. Once the temperatures return to optimal levels, it can still take a week for the hormones to balance and regular pod formation to resume. Shortened stamens with recently opened flowers can be a telltale sign of heat damage, yielding smaller plants.

Dehydration or drought is another huge stressor for canola. During the reproductive stages there can be hormone imbalance, which once again disrupts pod formation and seed set. When conditions are too dry, the canola plants will progressively drop late flowers at the top of the main raceme and on branches. This is when energy reserves kick on and the canola plants use their reserves to preserve the pods they already have. Additional symptoms of drought include wilting of the leaves, lack of middle pods, early germination within the pod and premature flower death. 

Missing pods, also known as “blanks,” appear from flowering and are identifiable by the blank branching up to the raceme where pods did not form. Blanks are a result of something off within your crop, whether it is undesirable conditions, poor soil fertility, or disease. This should be the first sign something is not right within your conditions. 

Proper nutrition is key for maximizing canola yields. Phosphorus is involved in many plant growth processes, from energy storage (from photosynthesis and metabolism of carbohydrates) to plant structure. Sulphur is required, in conjunction with nitrogen, to produce certain proteins containing amino acids, as well as other functions within the plant.

Deficiency in sulphur and boron can generate problems in pod and seed set as well as fertilization. Sulphur deficiencies are noted when growth appears stunted and by lighter coloured leaves and purple or cupping on stem leaves during bolting. Boron deficiency appears in a similar way, as hot conditions causing a reduction in fertilization. Blanks will be seen up the stem and flowering are extended due to poor seed set. 

Clubroot is a soil-borne disease that causes nodules or galls to form on the roots of cruciferous plants. This ultimately causes premature death of the plants – the culprit of this disease? A fugus-like protist called Plasmodiophora brassicae. Unfortunately, there are no economic control measures that can remove this pathogen from your field once it infests. It is incredibly important to keep it minimal by having a sanitization plan and record keeping and rotating the crop every year. 

Understanding the way your crop works and being able to see the signs of a struggling crop, diagnosing early and coming up with a management plan allows producers to optimize their yield. We farm the soil, and the soil grows the crop.