Living Farm providing ag answers through research
Wherrett said that even though it is the same pathogen calling, there are three diseases: crown canker, upper canopy infection, and pod canopy infections. He then used slides to explain what the disease was and how it affects plants. Afterwards, Wherrett moved on to speak about where current research is focused.
“We just had a new project funded,” said Wherrett. “We really are trying to understand what the quantitative resistance means and how we manage it. And we think it degrades over time, but we don’t actually know: is quantitative resistance the same or genetically different? And can we rotate to manage it? We are collecting stubbles and they’re all being sent to the one location from across Australia, and we’re trying to determine whether we put stubble, say from Western Australia over the same crop or the same variety as stubble being put over Victoria and see whether you get a different response in terms of quantitative resistance. And that’ll determine whether there are different genetics or are we just selecting for the same set of genes.”
Wherrett said that they’re going back to paddock-scale work and getting five years of information from 175 paddocks across Southern Australia, used by agronomists because they are routinely applying fungicides and we can’t tell them right now whether that fungicide is a worthwhile investment or not.
To conclude, Wherrett gave his thoughts on the black leg pathogen and genetics.
“We know black leg is a highly adaptive disease,” said Wherrett. “It’s decimated the industry before and we’ve been lucky enough through breeding and fungicides and agronomy to always remain around three to five years ahead of the disease. We are lucky that we have a very collaborative community between breeders, researchers, and agronomists in the canola industry where we get together. It’s a combination of both major and minor gene resistance and where are we heading because of the changes in economy, not early sowing and pushing up the canopy infections. And now we’re thinking of the diseases as three separate diseases.”