Tips for final seed decisions

When making final seed decisions, consider disease resistance, days to maturity, lodging, specialty oil traits and harvest traits in addition to yield to select varieties well suited to typical conditions on the farm.

For instance, growers in the short-season zone will consider days to maturity (DTM) of a variety and those in counties with clubroot should strongly consider a clubroot resistant variety. Queries on the Canola Performance Trials website can help growers consider these factors and other factors when selecting a variety.

A canola grower near Leduc, Alberta may run the following queries to select a variety that is most suitable:

1) Looking at the clubroot-resistant (CR) varieties, run a ‘compare varieties’ query for Alberta (2011-2016) on varieties 6056CR, CS2000 and V12-3  to reveal yield values from small-plot site. See the image below:

2) To check the maturity of a few other CR varieties grown in the short season zone, a query on 74-54RR, CS2000 and VR9562GC from small-plot sites would show:

3) For results from the short-season zone…
(a) Alberta field-scale trials of 74-54RR (2011-2016), a query would produce an average yield (in percentage of check) across these sites. (Click image to enlarge.)

b) Scrolling down would also reveal information on every data point in the data table and its location on a map, so the grower could look at results from specific sites closer to their fields.

c) Selecting the map pin near Ponoka would then allow the grower to look all the small plot or field scale data (yield, lodging, height and DTM) from 2011-2016 from all or a specific herbicide tolerance system that came out of the Ponoka site.