Rosy canola crop squares up against disease, production risks
LANGHAM, Sask. — The 2026 canola crop holds plenty of promise, but there are also a few nagging concerns, says an expert.
“The yield potential is really high, but the pests can take away some of that yield,” said Clint Jurke, regional technical services manager with BASF Agricultural Solutions Canada Inc.
This year is shaping up quite different from 2025. Last year got off to a dry start, but moisture conditions greatly improved in July and August. Farmers ended up with record yields.
This year, the first half of the growing season has been wet. Most of the Prairie region has experienced excess moisture, with some areas fighting floods.
That presents opportunities as well as challenges.
“A lot of those moisture-loving pests could become a bigger problem this year,” Jurke said during an interview at the Ag in Motion (AIM) show in Langham, Sask.
WHY IT MATTERS: Canola is in high demand and there has been flood damage in parts of Western Canada. How yields turn out will be critical.
Those pests include sclerotinia, clubroot, and even blackleg and verticillium.
“Sclerotinia is going to be the big one,” said Jurke.
He encouraged farmers to scout their fields for the disease and to spray with fungicide where warranted.
“There’s still time to save yield and the potential is high,” he said.
Insects to watch for
Bertha armyworm is the other main pest growers should be scouting for this time of the year. Trap counts are getting high for that pest in some regions of the Prairies.
“They will eat yield and decimate crops really quickly,” said Jurke.
Agronomists still don’t have a good handle on how bad cabbage seedpod weevil damage will be this year. The pest became an economic issue in southern Saskatchewan and in Manitoba for the first time last year.
Canola outlook from the ground
Western Producer markets desk analyst Bruce Burnett conducted a mid-July crop tour of the Prairie region.
He is forecasting an average Western Canadian canola yield of 39 bushels per acre, which would result in 19.1 million tonnes of production.
Burnett said it is evident that farmers planted a record amount of the oilseed, but a lot of acres in the north have been lost to abandonment and drowning.
Jen Dale, product line manager for canola with Nutrien Ag Solutions, thinks it is too early to be making yield predictions, noting that harvest is 45 to 60 days away.
“Anyone who is trying to estimate a crop right now is likely going to be wrong 99 per cent of the time,” she said at the Ag in Motion farm show.
On the bright side, she noted, farmers in the Palliser’s Triangle region, who have been dealing with dry conditions the past few years, are finally looking at good crops.
“It’s nice to see some of those areas that had some rough years starting to see some positives,” she said.
Twyla Jones, senior manager of agronomic innovation for Canada with Nutrien Ag Solutions, has driven across Western Canada the past few weeks and noted that crop conditions are “positive,” except for drowned out areas.
She doesn’t have a sense how much disease pressure there will be yet, but said growers have been applying more fungicide than usual.
Jones agreed with Jurke that Bertha armyworm trap counts are high in certain areas.
“We won’t know if that’s an outbreak for a few weeks though,” she said.
Flooding impacts
Jurke said crops that escaped the flooding look fantastic. But he agrees with Burnett that a lot of damage was caused by excess moisture in the Edmonton area, as well as northeast Saskatchewan and northwest Manitoba.
He noted that northeast Saskatchewan traditionally has the biggest canola footprint in Canada.
Burnett estimates 10 to 15 per cent of the crop in the northern region of the Prairie grain belt is two to three weeks delayed.
Jones thinks those crops are closer to 10 days behind. She noted that they could catch up if there are adequate heat units over the next month.
Jurke, meanwhile, agrees with Burnett’s assessment, adding that the late crop is yet another yield risk.
“If we do get an early fall frost that’s widespread, that could really hurt the situation and we’ve seen that happen before,” he said.
He recalls 2004. There was a fabulous crop on the way, but it growth was late and vulnerable to an early frost. That’s exactly what happened on Aug. 19 when a frost hammered crops in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Jurke noted that a lot of crops in the north were seeded in June, unusually late. Many crops in that region were just starting to flower as of June 21, while crops in regions like Lethbridge were already coming out of flower.
He hopes the first frost won’t occur until mid- to late-September.
“If there’s a Labour Day frost, that’s not going to be good,” he said.
Weather wish list
Today’s canola varieties are resistant to a wide variety of stresses such as drought and heat, but they are not impervious to frost, which forms ice crystals in the seed, cutting off the enzymes that remove chlorophyll.
The good news is that there hasn’t been an early frost in many years. Green seed problems have largely disappeared from the market after being a big factor in the late-1990s and early-2000s.
Jurke said ideal weather conditions for the second half of the growing season would be cool and dry weather.
“Interestingly enough, smoke might actually be one of those benefits to a lot of our crops,” he said.
It protected last year’s crop from hot days and intense light.
Jurke said crops don’t need much further moisture. Soils are still saturated from early season rainfall.
“If we keep getting rains, that’s just more opportunity for sclerotinia to do more and more damage,” he said.
“It’s a moisture-loving fungus that just eats crop anytime it’s wet.”
