Skip to content

County on the hunt for clubroot-infested fields

It was only two years ago that Stettler County went from a clubroot-free county to a county afflicted with the soil-borne disease

It was only two years ago that Stettler County went from a clubroot-free county to a county afflicted with the soil-borne disease, but the agricultural staff keep working hard to prevent it from spreading.

The disease affects crops like canola and mustard and causes the roots to swell in an affliction called gulling, which, in turn, prevents the plant’s root from taking in nutrients and water properly. The plant at best will be stunted and at worst can die.

“(Clubroot) is like a tick in that it needs a host to survive,” Quinton Beaumont, agricultural director for the county, said. “If you have clubroot infected soil and don’t plant canola for four years, you will kill 50 per cent of the spores in the soil.”

However, once clubroot spores are in the soil, it can take 20 years for it to die off completely.

Preventing the spread of the disease is key, Beaumont said, and farmers can help do this by cleaning their farming equipment before moving from field to field. Brushing or power-spraying dirt off equipment and giving it a quick antiseptic wash can prevent clubroot spores from moving from field to field.

All of the counties surrounding Stettler are infected with the disease to certain extents, but Stettler hadn’t found an infected crop until 2012. Now, it’s keeping that from spreading that counts.

“We have ‘hot zones’ where we’ve found (clubroot) in the past,” Beaumont explained. “We do random field checks five in a five mile radius.” Additional random checks are done in areas where the disease hasn’t been found.

When county employees enter a field selected for inspection, they check six spots in a “W” formation, pulling 50 stalks. They look for the gulled roots, which appear very swollen, and anything suspicious is sent off to a lab to confirm whether or not it’s clubroot or another issue that’s causing the root to swell and contort.

County staff are starting the inspection now and have checked about 45 fields out of a planned 300 to date. While some samples have been sent to the lab, no cases of clubroot have been confirmed thus far.