Keeping the Pathogens at bay: Managing Cereal and Flax Diseases in Western Canada

The risk of field crop diseases in western Canada can be reduced, and sometimes eliminated with an integrated disease management approach consisting of a diverse crop rotation, appropriate agronomic practices, cultivation of disease resistant cultivars, and when conditions require, the judicious use of fungicide. In our group, we work in a variety of areas to improve disease control of cereals and flax and currently we are developing tools to improve the efficiency of disease assessment for research and breeding purposes. I will discuss some of the past and current research in our program over the past 12 years and would be interested in developing new collaborations with researchers interested in this research.

Professor Randy Kutcher is an applied plant pathologist at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and teaches and conducts research on diseases of cereal crops and flax. In wheat, the current focus is on Fusarium head blight, bacterial leaf streak and stripe rust, and on flax on flax wilt and pasmo. Randy takes an integrated disease management approach to disease mitigation, utilizing any, and all strategies available. In a past career, Randy has investigated disease mitigation in oilseed (primarily canola) crops.

For more information, please contact Juanita Ryan.