Prairie Giants Crop Report - 2023 Season in Review

The Prairie Giants Crop Report

Field observations at your fingertips

November 1, 2023

Taylor Kurtenbach

2023 Season in Review

Although there were challenges, the 2023 season was also full of celebration; celebrating 10 years in business, good yields under challenging growing conditions, and all the small victories in between.

This spring brought warm weather and excellent seeding conditions leading to rapid emergence and good crop establishment. The first week of June saw hot and humid conditions, favourable for crop growth, but challenging for in-crop spraying. Because of this, we saw increased flashing in cereals and greater surfactant burn in canola. This weather also brought thunderstorms, including hail and extremely variable rainfall across our region.

Flea beetle pressure was also extremely variable this year, there were fields that got 3+ applications of insecticide, where many others got none. Even though flea beetle populations were similar to previous years, this spring had the least amount of flea beetle applications since 2018. This just shows how good conditions, where canola is growing rapidly, can easily outgrow high flea beetle pressure. We were very impressed with Buteo Start again this year.

Other insect issues included…

⦿ Leaf hoppers causing Aster Yellow, a disease carried by the insect, in wheat and canola. The disease does not usually cause significant yield loss, except in extreme cases like 2012.

⦿ Armyworms and grasshoppers in cereals, read more here.

Summer conditions turned dry, but a cooler than average July helped alleviate some of the drought stress. Because of the dry conditions, Verticillium Stripe was present in all canola fields regardless of variety or brand. Its impact on yield is still unknown, but it can make harvest more challenging. It is also important to note that because it is a late onset disease, Verticillium Stripe does not set the plants yield. The number of pods, size of pods, etc. is set far before the disease sets in. Fields sprayed with a fungicide at early blackleg staging, like Nexicor, seemed to have less incidence of Verticillium. Keeping the plant as healthy as possible will be an important management strategy going forward. Blackleg was also quite prevalent in fields that were not sprayed with a fungicide.

There were a few new canola varieties and traits available this year. Thanks to Reece Keay and Bayer Crop Science we were able to have a Dekalb TruFlex plot behind the shop that we could watch all season. Final results can be found here. B4015, a new Optimum Gly canola variety from Brevant, was also compared. Optimum Gly is a herbicide tolerance trait that allows higher rates of glyphosate, up to 720 grams or 2 REL, across a wider application window than traditional Roundup Ready varieties. Optimum Gly is Corteva’s version of TruFlex. It yielded similar to DK901TF, at 55.4 bus/acre.

We were also able to get experience with Brevant’s new Liberty Link Nexera swath variety, B3017N. Yields were comparable to 1028 RR. A new straight cut Liberty Link Nexera will be available in 2024.

With drier conditions, the risk for re-cropping sensitive crops increases. Products like flucarbazone (Sierra 3.0, Everest 3.0), clopyralid (Akito, Cirpreme XC, Eclipse XC, Lontrel XC, Prestige XL, Prominex), Viper ADV, Odyssey Ultra NXT and Ares, without proper rainfall, have potential to carryover into the next season. Stacking certain groups, 2 and 14, can also lead to potential crop injury in specific crops the following year. Below is a summary of precipitation from Government of Manitoba weather stations. Because rainfall varies so much, each field should be assessed individually.

Inglis

May 1 – August 31 = 202 mm

June 1 – August 31 = 186 mm

Russell

May 1 – August 31 = 162 mm

June 1 – August 31 = 135 mm

Roblin

May 1 – August 31 = 150 mm

June 1 – August 31 = 143 mm

St. Lazare

May 1 – August 31 = 151 mm

June 1 – August 31 = 113 mm

Potential watchouts include…

Canola after Viper ADV if received less than 125 mm accumulated rainfall between June 1 and September 1.

Peas and soybeans after clopyralid if received less than 175 mm accumulated rainfall over entire growing season, and less than 140 mm between June 1 and August 31.

Peas and soybeans after flucarbazone.

Give the agronomists at Prairie Giants a call to discuss further.

More information on herbicide carryover can be found in our Prairie Giants Crop Report 2021 Season in Review, found here.

To celebrate our 10-year anniversary, we hosted our first ever golf tournament “PGCS Classic!” It was a great day! Thanks to all our growers, industry representatives and the staff at Prairie Lake Lodge for making the day a success. We were also able to host our annual crop tour with Beischer Family Seeds to tour new canola and cereal (SY Manness Wheat, CDC Renegade Barley) varieties available for the 2024 season.

Thank you for the support over this past year, and all the years before. We truly appreciate it and look forward to the years to come.

-Doug, Shelly, Braden, Taylor, Andrea, Rainey, & Karl