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Farmers are being encouraged to check for verticillium stripe in canola

Verticillium Stripe is a fungal disease that was first discovered in Canadian canola crops in 2014, the disease causes lodging and yield loss in canola.

Courtney Boyachek,  an agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada says it's a soil-borne disease.

"Meaning that,  it overwinters in the soil and then it germinates in the soil in the Spring and then the plant uptakes it around flowering."

She says in order to identify the disease producers will want to cut the stem of the canola plant off right at the root.

"It'll just be that grayish Starburst in the cross-section, kind of around 60% seed color change. You'll be able to see a really definitive line up the middle of the plant - where half of the plant is going to start dying off and half of the plant is still going to be thriving. A couple of other things - the epidermis of the plant (the stem tissue)  is just going to start peeling away like wallpaper, underneath that once you peel that off, you'll be able to see little microsclerotia. It kind of looks like someone took a pepper shaker and shook pepper all over the stem."

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Kansas Wheat Harvest 2026 | Three John Deere S7 700 Combines in Action

Video: Kansas Wheat Harvest 2026 | Three John Deere S7 700 Combines in Action

Kansas Wheat Harvest 2026 is underway near Alden, Kansas!

In this video, I spend time with Frederick Harvesting, a custom harvesting operation based in Alden, Kansas. Back at their home farm, three new John Deere S7 700 combines equipped with John Deere HDF40 draper heads work through a drought-stricken winter wheat crop while one of the farm's John Deere 8R 370 tractors pulls a Brent 1398 grain cart.

Most of the Frederick Harvesting crew was already busy cutting wheat in southwest Kansas, but these machines remained at home to finish up local fields. Throughout the video, I explain what is happening, discuss the effects of dry conditions on the crop, and capture plenty of aerial footage showing the combines working with the grain elevator at Alden in the background.