The time is right for testing. Farmers and agronomists have lab tests available for blackleg, clubroot, verticillium stripe and glyphosate-resistant kochia. Here are three questions to get you primed.

1. Think you might have blackleg? SaskCanola is working with Discovery Seed Labs and Manitoba Canola Growers is working with PSI Lab to offer no-cost blackleg testing programs for their farmer members. Labs check your submitted samples for the presence of blackleg. They can use these same samples to do two other tests. What are they? (Choose two.)

Blackleg race ID

Presence of clubroot

Pesticide residue

Presence of verticillium stripe

2. Think you might have clubroot? Soil tests and plant tissue tests use PCR analysis to confirm the presence of clubroot DNA in a sample. Labs also use a qPCR test. What does the qPCR test measure?

The amount of clubroot in the sample

The clubroot pathotype

The level of clubroot virulence

The presence of clubroot resting bodies

3. Think you might have glyphosate-resistant kochia? PSI Lab offers a DNA test to quantify the common gene related to glyphosate resistance in kochia. What is one limitation of the DNA tests?

They identify only known resistance genes

They cost a lot 

They are slow 

They require collection of seeds, which means weeds have to reach maturity 

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