Glacier FarmMedia – When I was first hired by Alberta Agriculture as a diagnostic plant pathologist, I was told I would be primarily responsible for barley, oat, wheat and canola diseases. I was also asked to head up the provincial control program for bacterial ring rot of potato. The bacterial ring rot program, run in […] Read more

How the problem of ergot in cereals was solved in Alberta
In the story of ergot in wheat, barley and oats, the answer was simply ‘copper’

Alfalfa replant disease and related disorders
While the exact cause remains unclear, we now know it’s best to wait two or three years before trying to re-establish that alfalfa stand
It has now been shown you cannot plant alfalfa immediately on land that had grown alfalfa the same or previous year, nor even where one had been winterkilled. The current theory is that autotoxicity occurs when mature alfalfa plants excrete a chemical that inhibits the germination and growth of alfalfa seedlings