Canada: New oilseed and soybean varieties for 2018
Author: Leeann Minogue
In August the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association surveyed retail companies about their experience with the herbicide dicamba in the 2017 growing season. Of the 124 respondents (including some head offices with several branches), more than 80 per cent said they’d seen dicamba damage in soybean fields adjacent to where soybeans were sprayed, although they claimed label directions were followed.
With the release of soybeans with the XTend trait, beans tolerant to both dicamba and glyphosate , dicamba is back in sprayers again. Even with new, less-volatile formulations of dicamba, there have been many problems with spray drift. Non-tolerant soybeans are particularly susceptible to damage. While dicamba manufacturers are pointing to illegal use and improper application as the source of the problems, legal firms are rounding up claimants for class-action lawsuits. Meanwhile, farmers are struggling to keep their soybean fields clean, and Canadian retailers are responding to demand by offering more new varieties of XTend soybeans.
In canola varieties, new development focus on blackleg and clubroot resistance. There are products that contain more than one resistance gene for each of these diseases. As clubroot extends its reach across the Prairies, these traits will become more and more valuable.
Source: AgroPages
