The executive director of Winter Cereals Canada is advising farmers planning to seed winter wheat this fall to secure seed as soon as possible and to choose Emerson.
The biggest concern facing winter wheat growers this year, especially in southern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan, has been fusarium head blight a fungal disease that produces a toxin which dramatically impacts the desirability of the grain.
Jake Davidson, the executive director of Winter Cereals Canada, says it's hard to say how much of the winter wheat crop has been impacted by fusarium but in some areas it's been a very high percentage.
Jake Davidson-Winter Cereals Canada:
Some varieties have been hit harder than others.
We've seen an exceptionally good response with the new variety Emerson to being fusarium resistant and I'm being told that people that have grown fusarium and some of the other varieties are seeing the difference between five percent in a field of non-fusarium resistant down to .5 percent in the Emerson so Emerson looks to be the shining light for the future and I guess if we're going to have fusarium and it's not going to go away it looks like Emerson is going to be the perfect variety to replace Falcon in Manitoba because Falcon, Flourish, Buteo, the other ones, they tend to get fusarium.
They don't have the resistance but Emerson is coming in as a really good quality milling wheat.
If it's a good milling wheat it makes a good feed wheat but it is also showing very low in fusarium so for people that are thinking about seeding, if they can get Emerson that would be the number one to go with at this point.
Davidson says anyone who is thinking of planting winter should be securing seed because even the seed growers have had trouble with fusarium and fusarium doesn't make seed so seed supplies might be a little bit tighter than had been expected.
Source: Farmscape