Canola Straight Cutting Underway

Saskatchewan's Canola harvest is about a third complete according to last week's crop report from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture.

Last week's report had the province at 31 per cent of canola had been combined and an additional 44 per cent of canola is swathed or ready to straight-cut.

"We're starting to see stuff that's been left to straight-cut come off," Justine Cornelsen, with the Canola Council of Canada, said. "There's a lot of acres here in Manitoba that we leave to straight-cut. Those acres are now mature and are coming off the field."

Cornelsen says yields have been around 20 bushels per acre. She adds quality has also been mixed with some smaller seeds and sprouting being reported.

There have been some issues with canola regrowth.

"The regrowth after the rain definitely caused some challenges," explained Cornelsen. "It's something that if you're leaving a crop to straight-cut, you now have a green bottom there and green stems and new leaf material and it becomes a little bit challenging too when you also have things down in a swath. If you're going in and trying to manage some of that regrowth, be very cautious and aware of your pre-harvest intervals and that if you have desiccated a crop already with a certain product, likely you're not able to go in with that same product again."

Cornelsen adds now is a great time to be out in the field scouting for weed and disease issues and taking fall plant counts.