There were no confirmed cases of clubroot in Saskatchewan canola surveys last year, but verticillium stripe continues to advance in the province.
Alireza Akhavan, the Provincial Plant Disease Specialist, ran through the combined results from the Ministry of Agriculture and Sask Oilseed surveys during a provincial agronomy webinar last month, which looked at 235 fields across 152 rural municipalities.
"The good thing for Saskatchewan was that we did not find any new visible symptoms of the clubroot disease in any of the assessed fields. Also, none of the soil samples out of 235 got back or returned positive results, so our numbers remain the same. This is very good."
While clubroot is being kept in check, the same cannot be said for another disease verticillium stripe. A total of 73 R.M.s confirmed to have verticillium stripe in 2025, Akhavan said, "with more cases on the east side of the province, but there are cases in other regions as well, as well as the RM of Maple Creek in 2023."
He added the disease is also confirmed in Alberta.
Verticillium stripe is a concern because there are no significant management tools and only a couple of tolerant cultivars.
Regarding more traditional canola diseases, blackleg was still an issue in 2025, but much lower than 2024 which was an all-time high.
"We had 83% of the crops surveyed in 2025 had at least three slivers of blackleg. I understand that these numbers are still very high. Again, as I said, even in a dry year you can find blackleg quite often. Incidence was 11% across all surveyed fields and 14% in infected fields. Again, these are the numbers that we are used to see that, and they are much lower than numbers we observed in 2024."
Blackleg was most prevalent in the northwest and southeast at around 95% while the northeast had the lowest prevalence at 67%. The average blackleg incidence was in the northwest at 21% and the lowest in the southwest, he said.
And it was a similar story for sclerotinia – prevalence was the highest in the southeast at around 50% and the lowest in the southwest at 10%. Incidence was highest in the northeast and west central regions at 5% "given some of the irrigated fields are located there", Akhavan said, and lowest incidence was in the southwest region.
"Perhaps the take-home message from this regional breakdown is that usually the pattern for sclerotinia stem rot is well aligned with the moisture and environment in the area. And southwest, because it is drier, usually has the least sclerotinia stem rot." said Akhavan.
(With files from Neil Billinger, CJWW)
