Clubroot galls have been found in five fields in Manitoba, with four in the Swan River area, and one in the R.M. of Pembina. This compares to last year, when although 25 fields had clubroot spores in the soil, there were no symptoms on plants.

Manitoba Agriculture's oilseed specialist Anastasia Kubinec says although clubroot has been in the province since 2011, this is should be another wake up call for producers.

"Producers do need to be going out and looking in their fields if they see patches that are dead and properly identifying what the disease is, not just assuming it's a drowned-out section or it's blackleg or sclerotinia, actually pulling plants up because with clubroot you actually do have to look at the roots to see the symptoms," she says."

Soil can have clubroot spores without showing symptoms on plants, which is why Kubinec says it's important for producers to test soil and catch any low levels of the disease before it shows up on canola plants.

"We do categorize the spores at different levels, where if it's under a 1000, yes you have it there, but you're probably not going to see a disease for a long time," Kubinec says. "It's really when you get to that 100,000 spores per gram of soil, from what we understand from research — we're kind of clarifying that in Manitoba — that you aren't really going to see symptoms until it gets to that high concentration. So most of the fields we find are under 1000, but indeed we do have a few over 100,000 because those are the ones having the symptoms."

Kubinec says it's possible to samples soil anytime, and right now would be a good time to check fields that harvested canola this year. She also reminds producers to be diligent about cleaning farm equipment moving from field to field.