Cold Damage on Canola

We had some low temperatures a week ago, 18 degrees, and we had damage to Canola and Carinata.  A week later  is a good time to assess the damage to see if the growing point is alive. Often leaves are burned back and killed but the growing point survives and the plant regrows rather quickly as it has a good rootsystem to help it bounce back. I looked at several fields this week and we do have some plant death, mainly in replant fields where the plants are very small and more susceptible to damage. Or, also we see it where we have small plants intermingled with larger plants for some reason.  You can have some areas of fields affected worse as well like a bottom where it got slightly colder.

On the larger plants the effect is startling and looks terrible. The field looks white in some cases. It is bad and will set the plants back, but if they survive, they will regrow new leaves. So it really looks worse than it is in some cases.

In most of the fields I’ve been in we have pretty good survivability. I can see green growth at the center of the plant, the growing point.

Dr. Steve Olson, who is helping with the Carinata project, reports that some of those fields will have to be replanted. He mentioned that a good way to tell if plants are alive is to tickle them to see if they move back and forth, if they just go to one side and kind of collapse that’s not good.