Research Archive - Page 8 of 18 - Alberta Pulse Growers

Beans for health: a little goes a long way

albertapulse on January 3, 2018

With partial funding support from Pulse Canada and others, this study has built a body of data to support a label health claim that even a small serving of beans can lower your blood sugar.

“A serving of beans, instead of low-fibre starchy foods such as corn, rice, potatoes or macaroni, results in reduced blood sugar after a meal.”

Imagine the impact of these words, or something close to them, on the label of a Canadian food product. At a glance, consumers concerned about high blood sugar could see that beans will deliver a benefit.

As Dan Ramdath explains, Health Canada requires a solid body of credible data to support the claim. The reduction in blood sugar must be significant — at least 20% compared to the alternative — and a minimum dose of beans to achieve this effect must be identified.

“Lots of work has been done on the blood glucose lowering effect of beans,” said Ramdath, Senior Research Scientist (Nutrition) with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Guelph, ON. “But there are still gaps we needed to address in order to get the health claim.”

In 2015-16, Ramdath led a study to determine the blood sugar (also known as glycemic) impact of consuming six different types of beans, compared to commonly consumed starchy foods like corn, macaroni, rice and potato.

A smaller serving size

“Our methodology was very simple,” Ramdath said. “We had between 12 and 24 healthy volunteers involved in the study. They came in 10 times and consumed randomly a half-cup or quarter-cup serving of six different beans, as well as the four starchier alternatives.”

An overnight fast ensured that any effect seen in blood sugar could be linked to the foods consumed that morning. Finger-prick blood tests were performed on each volunteer seven times in the two hours following their test meal.

To support a health claim, it was necessary to find a 20% improvement. As it happened, consuming one of the six types of beans resulted in blood sugar that was 32% to 65% lower than with the corn, macaroni, rice and potato. What’s more, the half-cup and quarter-cup bean servings performed roughly comparably in terms of glycemic impact.

Based on this study, Ramdath sees a data set that should be highly compelling for Health Canada as it considers a blood sugar health claim for beans.

This is great news for Canadian consumers, who may soon have an easy way to choose beans on scientific health evidence. As Ramdath sees it, the news is also good for anyone who grows beans for a living.

“If I was speaking to bean growers, I’d say we found that even a small amount of beans makes a huge difference,” he said. “Keep growing them, and we will continue to find ways to improve the health of Canadians and the economic vitality of the pulse-growing sector. And a big thank you to growers for financially supporting research that is critical to advancing a pulse health claim.”

Project at a glance

Project title: Glycemic impact of selected Ontario beans: comparison with corn, macaroni, rice and potatoes

Project lead: Dan Ramdath, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Total value of project: $16,000

Start date: 2014

Completion date: 2016

Pulse ingredients audition for bigger role in meat products

albertapulse on January 3, 2018

Conventional binders like wheat crumb, soy protein and milk protein work well, but many consumers are allergic to them. Can pulse-based ingredients answer the call?

Many consumers enjoy a hot dog, bologna sandwich, burger or breakfast sausages from time to time. For many others, these products are off-limits because they’re allergic to the ingredients that are used as binders in these food products.

“This is done functionally to minimize the cost,” explained Zeb Pietrasik, Meat Scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s Food Processing Development Centre. “By binding additional water in there, they can increase their yield. But the ingredients they use – wheat crumb and soy and milk protein – can be allergenic too.”

If you took all the meat products in your local supermarket that contain these binders, it’s clear this is a massive market. Pulse-based ingredients might be able to create a win-win in this food processing category. By replacing allergenic ingredients, more consumers could buy these products. The resulting product would also be healthier for everyone.

In 2016, with principal funding from the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency (ALMA) and additional support from Alberta Pulse Growers, Pietrasik kicked off a two-year study. He aims to develop value-added meat products with non-allergen ingredients. Pulse ingredients are among the candidates.

Ingredient screening in ’16, product testing in ’17

Pietrasik began the project with a hypothesis that pulse ingredients ought to suit processors’ needs quite nicely.

“We’re looking at two meat systems,” he said. “The first group is a class of emulsified products such as hot dogs and bologna. The second group contains most burger patties. Pulses are perfect for these products, they are not out of line in terms of functionality.”

In the first year of the project, Pietrasik screened more than 30 different non-allergenic ingredients. These included pulse flours and the protein, starch and fibre fractions of faba bean, yellow pea and red and yellow lentils.

During the program’s second year, Pietrasik will narrow down the list of 30 to a short-list of the most promising non-allergenic ingredient candidates. Products will be developed and sensory-tested to produce final recommendations for meat processors.

“It is going well and the pulse ingredients are performing well,” Pietrasik said. “Pea starch is one of the best in both systems and pea protein has also performed strongly in beef burgers.”

For companies that process meat products, the addition of pulse-based ingredients as binders offers compelling advantages. People who are allergic to wheat, soy and milk-based ingredients will become potential customers overnight. Pulses’ nutritional advantages will boost the value of the final products.

The decision, of course, rests with the food manufacturers themselves. Once Pietrasik’s project is complete, he expects the case for pulses will be strong.

“Some ingredients might perform well in this type of processing,” he said. “They have good texture and high yield. A lot depends on the economics, but if they provide the same functionality, I don’t see any barriers for these to be used by processors.”

Project at a glance

Project title: Developing value-added meat products with non-allergen ingredients

Project lead: Zeb Pietrasik, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry

Total value of project: $183,250

Start date: February 1, 2016

Completion date: March 31, 2018

More pulses in your pasta

albertapulse on January 3, 2018

Gluten-free ready meal products could be one way to get more pulses on grocery store shelves. This NAIT engineer is working with NAIT chefs to develop a line of products.

Alberta pulse growers are anxious to get their crops on Canadians’ tables more often. What are the best opportunities?

According to Paolo Mussone, two of the fastest-growing categories in the food industry could suit pulses very well: gluten-free foods and the ready meals now sold by many retailers. Put the two together and they spell what could be a significant market opening for pulses.

“Sales of gluten-free products in Canada were $5 billion in 2016, a 20% increase over 2015,” said Mussone, Applied Bio/Nanotechnology Industrial Research Chair at NAIT in Edmonton. “A lot of ready meals tend to contain unhealthy amounts of salt and sugar. We are trying to use pulse flour to develop a product that has all the fibre and nutritional value of pulses, but still tastes good, and would also be gluten-free.”

In June 2017, with Alberta Pulse Growers funding, Mussone began a six-month project to further develop a line of gluten-free ready meals based on pulse flour. The project will be a collaboration with Maynard Kolskog, a NAIT Culinary Arts instructor and food researcher, who already has a proven recipe for pasta dough made with pulse flour rather than wheat flour.

Mussone’s idea is to scale up Kolskog’s recipes and develop products, working with companies that manufacture lasagna noodles and agnolotti, which are similar to ravioli.

Recipe development, engineering and sensory work

Mussone and his chef colleagues will refine the recipes while developing characterization, testing and production protocols that will help local businesses commercialize the new dough concept.

Dough samples will be analyzed using advanced microscopy and rheology instrumentation that’s available at NAIT. Mussone’s nanotechnology expertise will help ensure the dough formulations can be scaled to high-volume industrial extrusion equipment. “When you remove the gluten, you lose elasticity,” Mussone said, “so the pulse flour will still need to have the level of elasticity that you want in products like lasagna noodles.”

There’s a lot more to producing gluten-free ready meals than perfecting the recipe and production engineering. Taste will make or break the success of these products as a potentially significant new market for pulses. As a final step in this project, sensory experts and panels at the University of Alberta will make sure the taste of these products will meet consumer expectations.

How much market potential is there in gluten-free doughs made with pulse flour? Even in this project’s early stages, the NAIT team has already been contacted by a pasta company and pizza dough maker expressing interest in this work. Mussone is confident that this project can eventually open new doors for pulses and pulse growers.

“I would confidently say that there is definitely large market potential for growth here,” said Mussone.

Project at a glance

Project title: Develop a novel line of gluten-free ready meal products from Alberta-based pulses

Project lead: Paolo Mussone, NAIT

Total value of project: $25,000

Start date: March 1, 2017

Completion date: August 31, 2018

Higher-nutrient dry beans on the way

albertapulse on January 3, 2018

By developing new dry bean cultivars with higher protein, dietary fibre and resistant starch, this scientist has set the stage for a new generation of superior varieties.

Alberta’s dry bean growers, like those who grow other pulse crops, have a product that’s attractive to consumers and food companies. Among other nutritional values, dry beans are a potent source of protein, dietary fibre and resistant starch.

How can we increase the economic value of Alberta-grown dry beans? One way is to increase the amount of these nutrients in commercially grown dry bean varieties.

John Lu, Lethbridge-based Research Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, has been working on this effort for years. Most recently, with funding from Growing Forward 2, he’s spent the past five years screening hundreds of dry bean lines in 10 different market classes of dry beans.

“My work is to improve nutrient value and food quality of dry beans,” Lu said. “We are trying to develop novel dry bean lines with high protein, resistant starch and dietary fibre to improve dry bean commercial values and production in Canada.”

Four years of field trials

Dry beans – whether navy, pinto, Great Northern, black, red or other market classes – stand out for their strong nutritional profile as a health food with a low glycemic index. Information on beans’ key nutrients, such as protein, dietary fibre and resistant starch, is still limited. Overall, in Lu’s view, dry bean production in Canada is greatly underutilized and undervalued.

In this project, Lu and his collaborators conducted field trials from 2014 to 2017 to identify dry bean lines with higher levels of these nutrient values. In all, he screened 350 diverse collections, obtained from dry bean breeding programs in Canada, the U.S. and worldwide. These dry bean samples included germplasm, cultivars and advanced breeding lines.

This process found significant variation in protein, dietary fibre and resistant starch among different dry beans. Based on overall analytical results and evaluation, Lu has come up with five dry bean lines, which have been selected as cross-parents to further develop the most promising lines.

Lu emphasizes that plant breeding is a long-term effort. He and his collaborators made 16 cross-combinations in 2016. The F2, F3 and F4 generations are scheduled to be advanced in 2017 and the F5 populations of recombinant inbred lines (RILs) will be obtained by the end of the project term. From there, it’ll be at least a few more years before Lu’s work is reflected in commercially available varieties.

While higher yield isn’t the aim of his study, Lu notes that the improvement of dry bean nutrients and grain quality can greatly strengthen Canada’s competitive position in the world dry bean market.

“We have crossed good, high-yielding cultivars with new germplasm and that gets us new cultivars,” said Lu. “But, if you just improve the quality of the grain, yield could decline. We need to make sure we keep yield close to the traditional level but increase the quality. We can keep all the good things and add some new ones too.”

Project at a glance

Project title: Improve nutritional values of dry bean to promote its utilization in health foods

Project lead: John Lu, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Total value of project: $247,950

Start date: April 1, 2013

Completion date: March 31, 2018

Pulse disease science confronts a new foe: Aphanomyces

albertapulse on January 3, 2018

In 2012, scientists discovered that pea root rot caused by Aphanomyces was present on the Prairies. This project began to build a defensive toolkit for pea growers.

Pea growers in Western Canada have battled root rot in recent years. Until relatively recently, it was believed most of this disease was associated with the causal agent Fusarium.

According to Bruce Gossen, 2012 brought a game-changing development.

“At that time, there had been reports and observations indicating increasing problems associated with root rot in pea,” said Gossen, Principal Research Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Saskatoon. “There was lots of Fusarium causing root rot but Dr. Sabine Banniza at the University of Saskatchewan demonstrated that we should also be looking at Aphanomyces.”

In 2013, with funding from Growing Forward 2, Gossen and a team of western Canadian plant disease specialists began a five-year project to build a knowledge base for root rot.

Start from the basics

When a pea or lentil plant shows signs of root rot, how do you know what caused it: Fusarium, Aphanomyces or another agent entirely? The project’s first order of business was coming up with reliable molecular assessments of the pathogen(s) causing the disease.

“We needed to develop identification techniques using molecular biology so we could go in and determine which species was causing problems in this pea field,” Gossen said. “Aphanomyces is hard to culture, so there was lots of effort just to do that.”

Next up, the team needed to determine just how widespread Aphanomyces root rot was. The news wasn’t good. Aphanomyces was found at high levels in virtually every region.

What about commercially available seed treatments and soil amendments as a way to manage Aphanomyces root rot? Gossen and team tested them all, but didn’t find the breakthrough that growers might hope for.

“There is a good mix of seed treatments that are useful on other pathogens,” Gossen said, “but we found nothing that was effective enough against Aphanomyces.”

Perhaps plant breeding offered a way forward. If some pea cultivars had some degree of genetic resistance to Aphanomyces, that could offer a long-term answer. Dr. Bob Conner (AAFC, Morden) and his group have had success identifying cultivars with less susceptibility to root rot in general than the rest of the available cultivars. They also identified lines with some specific resistance to Aphanomyces. The team developed molecular markers to give breeders a head start, which provides an avenue for the next stage of Aphanomyces research.

Once scientists learned of the widespread presence of Aphanomyces as a causal agent of root rot on pea and lentil, the push was on to find answers. This project established the foundation for a longer-term Aphanomyces defense. One thing’s for sure. Aphanomyces is now a fact of life for scientists, agronomists and pea growers.

“We were surprised by how widespread the Aphanomyces pathogen is,” Gossen said. “Recently, we’ve made progress on identifying fields at risk. Dr. Syama Chatterton (AAFC, Lethbridge) is developing a decision support system for growers that would recommend a break between susceptible crops for fields with a high risk of severe root rot.”

Project at a glance

Project title: Pea root rot: distribution, genetic variability, resistance and management

Project lead: Bruce Gossen, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Total value of project: $1,757,400

Start date: April 1, 2013

Completion date: March 30, 2018

An early warning system for pea leaf weevil

albertapulse on December 22, 2017

Three years of producer-funded research enabled the development of a semiochemical-baited trap to monitor pea leaf weevil in the prairie provinces.

Pea leaf weevil is a tiny insect that punches far above its weight in terms of potential impact on crop yield. The size of a grain of rice, this non-native invasive insect has emerged in recent years as a threat to Alberta’s most-planted pulse crop.

Complicating growers’ pea leaf weevil defense is the fact that this insect appears intermittently. Some years it’s a significant problem, while in others it’s just a minor inconvenience.

What if pea growers had a way to determine whether next year’s pea leaf weevil activity was likely to be problematic?

University of Alberta entomologist Maya Evenden spent three years working on just such a solution. With support from Alberta Pulse Growers, via the Alberta Crop Industry Development Fund, Evenden has developed the tools for a pea leaf weevil monitoring system.

Two naturally occurring chemicals as bait

“There are two times in the life cycle of pea leaf weevil where you can monitor adult activity,” Evenden said. “You can do it in the spring when adult weevils come into the field and in the fall when the next generation of adults leave the field in search of overwintering locations. You can use traps in the fall to check them when they go to overwinter. That would tell you whether or not you needed to use an insecticide seed treatment the following spring.”

As Evenden explains, her pea leaf weevil monitoring traps required some type of bait to attract weevils. She used two different types of semiochemicals, or information-bearing chemicals: an aggregation pheromones and volatile chemicals emitted by pea plants.

Over three years of field studies, Evenden used a variety of trap configurations, and various combinations and doses of aggregation pheromone and/or volatile chemicals as bait. Many field trapping studies were conducted in commercial field pea crops during three field seasons to optimize the best bait and trap type to attract and retain weevils.

In addition, Evenden’s team conducted a painstaking mark-recapture experiment over two years that involved the collection of approximately 20,000 weevils from pea fields. Of these, 10,000 were marked with a spot of nail polish on the thorax. The marked weevils were released at eight different distances from the traps to test the traps’ effective radius. As very few marked weevils were trapped in this experiment, more work is needed to establish how many traps might be needed, given the size of a field, for monitoring of pea leaf weevil populations.

After three years of field work led by Evenden, there is now a practical tool for monitoring pea leaf weevil. Evenden’s work with this insect will continue. Building on knowledge gained in the monitoring project, she’s now working to determine the extent of pea leaf weevil in the province.

“We’ve learned a lot about the chemical ecology of weevils and are now tracking it all over Alberta to get a field-scale reading of where pea leaf weevil is,” Evenden said.

Project at a glance

Project title: Development of semiochemical-based monitoring of the pea leaf weevil

Project lead: Maya Evenden, University of Alberta

Total value of project: $135,993

Start date: April 1, 2013

Completion date: October 31, 2016

Market development opens doors for pulse flours in China

albertapulse on December 22, 2017

Three proof-of-concept projects enabled Chinese scientists and food companies to experiment with Canadian pea and lentil flours in popular Chinese food products.

China has long been considered a high-potential market for Canadian pulse crops, and the destination of many trade missions involving our producers, processors and other industry leaders.

In 2014, Pulse Canada took market development in a new direction. Working with the Beijing-based Chinese Cereals and Oilseed Association, the organization facilitated three one-year research projects conducted by Chinese researchers and food companies. This project was supported by the Canadian International Grains Institute and co-funded by Alberta Pulse Growers and Saskatchewan Pulse Growers.

“The idea is that, if we are going to interest Chinese companies in Canadian pulses, they need to be involved in the research early on in the development process,” said Tanya Der, Pulse Canada’s Manager of Food Innovation and Marketing.

A value-added opportunity for Canada

“These are staple items that are eaten by people from all walks of life,” Der said. “Whether you live in the north or south, you’re eating some version of these. If we can get these high-volume products to use flour from Canadian pulses, that can have an impact.”

The three lead researchers each worked with a Chinese food company that specializes in one of the three product categories. Each team received a supply of pea and lentil flours, milled in Canada from Canadian-grown crops. This ensured that the quality, particle size and functionality of the pulse flours would be consistent.

Co-operation between the research community and food companies allowed them to study how Canadian pulse flours perform when blended with Chinese-milled wheat flours in various proportions, and when processed in a commercial manufacturing facility. The addition of pulse flours – which are high in protein and fibre — would also enable the companies to improve the nutritional profile of their products.

Der emphasized that market development in China must be viewed as a long-term effort. Pulse Canada’s approach was to work with Chinese partners to introduce them to Canadian pulse flours and build relationships that can grow over time and pay dividends in the future.

“This was really the initial stages of market development,” Der said, “a proof-of-concept looking at what percentage of pulse flour can be used in these products, and what is the impact on functionality and taste?”

Building on the relationships and technical knowledge developed with these three projects, the next stage of Pulse Canada’s Chinese market development is now taking shape.

“We’re close to finalizing some new projects on product innovation and consumer research for Canadian pulses in China,” Der said. “We’ll be announcing these in the summer of 2017.”

Project at a glance

Project title: Application of Canadian Pulses in Traditional Chinese Dry Noodles, Biscuits and Steamed Buns

Project lead: Chinese Cereals and Oilseed Association, Academy State Administration of Grain and Henan University of Technology

Total value of project: $720,637

Start date: 2014

Completion date: 2015

Agronomy 911: Can Inputs Save a Hailed-Out Crop?

albertapulse on December 22, 2017

This producer and agronomist heard about farmers applying fungicide or crop nutrients and seeing a comeback. Funding from APG allowed him to put this idea to the test.

Ken Coles has tried to salvage a hailed-out crop from two perspectives. First, his experience came as a farmer in the Coaldale, AB area.

“A number of years ago, on my own farm, we had hail and I went looking for information on whether there was anything I could do,” Coles said. “I was just flabbergasted at how little information is out there on how to deal with hail-damaged crops. There’s really nothing available and it puts you in a very uncomfortable situation.”

More recently, as General Manager of Farming Smarter, Coles began to hear stories about farmers who succeeded – at least partially – in keeping a hail-damaged crop growing and harvestable.

Simulation tool delivers ‘hail’ on demand

In 2014, with funding support from Alberta Pulse Growers and other groups, Coles began a four-year project to study the use of foliar fungicides and nutrient blends as potential hail recovery tools in pulses, cereals and oilseed crops.

The first thing he needed was hail. Because hail tends to be highly variable – lightly impacting one part of a field, while decimating another – Coles worked with Ralph Lange at Innotech Alberta to find a way to a simulate it consistently.

By 2015, they’d settled on a round-linked dog chain with rotating drums, mounted on the front-end loader of a tractor. The total cost was $4,000. Drive through a field with the simulator humming and the crop quickly resembles one that’s been damaged by hail. AFSC hail; adjusters were consulted to ensure that the damage assessments were an accurate reflection of how a field would be assessed after a hail event.

“In 2016, we started looking at the so-called rescue products,” said Coles. “With a very simple methodology, we went in and beat up different crops and then we applied the products.”

Over the next two years, Coles will continue and deepen his study of hail damage recovery. He’ll simulate hail at various growth stages in various crops, then assess how much certain fungicides and nutrient blends might help. An economic analysis will fill out the picture. The end-result should be precisely what Coles once lacked as a farmer himself: credible agronomic guidelines about what can, and can’t, be done to help a hail-damaged crop.

His early view is that claims of the miraculous performance of so-called rescue products should be taken with a grain of salt. So far, he hasn’t seen any big comebacks.

“My gut here is on that, on the rescue front, it will likely only be valid on the earliest hail damage,” Coles said. “If it’s a later hail, the rescue products could actually make it worse; they could actually be a negative. So far, it seems that timing of the hail damage seems to be more important than intensity.”

Project at a glance

Project title: Recovery of field crops from hail damage in Alberta using foliar fungicides and nutrient blends

Project lead: Ken Coles, Farming Smarter

Total value of project: $200,000

Start date: March 1, 2015

Completion date: February 28, 2019

Faba beans could be a go-to protein for food companies

albertapulse on December 22, 2017

Over the past year, University of Alberta scientist Lingyun Chen has developed a soluble faba bean protein concentrate. Food companies are already lining up to get some.

Everyone knows that Alberta farmers love their peas. Lentils have surged in acreage over the past decade. Dry beans are grown in large quantities too.

Still, as Alberta pulses stake a claim for a bigger role as healthy food ingredients, faba beans could be the pulse to watch.

“Faba beans are higher in protein, between 28% and 32%, compared to peas which are typically around 22% to 24%,” said Chen, Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Alberta. “The food industry has been showing a lot of interest in faba beans because they’re cheaper than other pulses, even though it’s higher in protein. With the higher protein in the final product they could have a protein claim on the label and it would also be gluten-free.”

W.A. Grain and Pulse Solutions of Innisfail is one of the companies helping to drive Alberta pulses’ growth into food ingredients. The company believed that, if Alberta could develop a faba bean-based protein concentrate of around 60% protein, food manufacturers could use it as a key ingredient in everything from nutrition bars to protein powders to breakfast cereals.

In 2016, with funding from Alberta Pulse Growers, Chen set out to develop this ground-breaking food ingredient for Alberta.

Solubility a key consideration

As Chen explains, the solubility of protein is important for meeting the functional needs of food companies. She used a partial hydrolyzation process to increase solubility. After hydrolysis, she took steps to improve the colour of the material and then separated the different components. “For faba beans we are looking at the initial fractionation,” Chen said. “After pearling to remove the surface, we then make flour and separate the different components, so you get fractions that are rich in protein, rich in fibre or rich in starch.”

In just one year of work, Chen successfully developed a soluble protein concentrate from faba beans. It’s a product W.A. Grain and Pulse Solutions has been looking for as it aims to participate in the fast-growing global food ingredients market. An international company has also expressed interest.

The final phase of the project runs to November 2017, in conjunction with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s Food Processing Development Centre in Leduc. The team there will produce two or three food prototypes based on Chen’s protein concentrate, perform sensory testing, analyze the products’ nutritive value and compare the quality of the protein with and without the hydrolysis process.

Thanks to Chen’s work, food companies could soon have access to a made-in-Alberta high-protein concentrate from faba bean. It could the essential ingredient in a wide range of healthy food products, and another element in the growth of faba bean acres in Alberta.

“We have been working with pulse proteins for many years, and with faba bean protein the past two years,” Chen said. “It’s a niche that many companies are interested in.”

Project at a glance

Project title: Value added applications of pulse proteins and fibre

Project lead: Lingyun Chen, University of Alberta

Total value of project: $218,045

Start date: February 15, 2016

Completion date: November 30, 2017

What’s the risk of white mould on your farm?

albertapulse on December 22, 2017

Dry bean growers need a better way to know whether an outbreak of this disease is coming tomorrow, next week or not at all. This four-year research project could provide it.

Most years, sclerotinia white mould is a significant disease issue for dry bean growers in southern Alberta. If the disease takes hold, yield losses of 10% or so can be expected, even with a fungicide application or two.

The 2010 growing season was not like most years. A devastating white mould outbreak caused yield losses of between 50% and 60%.

“White mould is an old foe for dry bean growers and has been a problem for the past 30 years,” explained Syama Chatterton, Lethbridge-based Plant Pathologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. “When growing dry beans, one starts with a shaky foundation in terms of white mould management. The pathogen is everywhere but most dry bean cultivars have no genetic resistance to white mould and irrigation can help create conditions that favour white mould.”

Focusing on Forecasting

Why is white mould a manageable problem in some years, but a crop-wrecking disaster in others? How can producers know which type of year they’re likely to face?

In 2017, with funding from Alberta Pulse Growers, Chatterton began a four-year project to develop a reliable way to forecast the risk of white mould in dry beans.

“We want to see if we can use airborne spore samples as a kind of advance warning system,” Chatterton said. “The samplers use a little fan that sucks in air and deposits spores in a vial. We bring the vials back to the lab and extract the DNA.”

This analytical process will give Chatterton crucial information on two fronts. First, what is the amount of sclerotinia spores flying around? Second, what is the environmental trigger to release those spores and initiate disease development?

If producers had this information when they need it, it could make their control program more effective. Generally, dry beans are sprayed for white mould at flowering stage and again seven to 10 days later. This approach takes crop staging into account but does not consider the likelihood or severity of white mould occurring.

“For us, 2017 is a proof-of-concept year,” Chatterton said. “We are going to get the spore samplers going and try to determine, does this work and can we get results within an afternoon? We will be out there every two or three days and will also do a weekly disease survey.”

Between now and 2020, Syama Chatterton and her team will build an accurate and timely white mould forecasting system for dry bean.

If this work can help growers manage this disease, and avoid a 2010-style wipeout, that should reduce the risk associated with dry bean production.

“If you knew when the spores would be released, or that disease will occur within the next 24 to 48 hours,” Chatterton said, “that would be very helpful information for producers.”

Project at a glance

Project title: Forecasting white mould risk in dry bean fields in southern Alberta

Project lead: Syama Chatterton, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Total value of project: $199,301

Start date: 2017

Completion date: 2021