New Website Launched to Support the Mitigation of Root Rot in Pulses

Nov 29, 2024

Today, Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers (MPSG), as part of the Pulse Root Rot Network, launched a new website, rootrot.ca, to catalyze a collaborative approach to root rot research and management focused on agronomy, breeding and pathology in peas and lentils.

Western Canadian pulse crop commissions, including MPSG, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers (SPG), and Alberta Pulse Growers (APG), developed a National Pulse Research Strategy that aligns research priorities and targets coordinating pulse research across Canada. The strategy identified controlling root rots in peas and lentils, particularly Aphanomyces and Fusarium, as the top priorities.

As root rots are a top priority, this website was developed to allow consistent messaging and increase the collaborative approach to addressing this issue by connecting researchers. This website includes resources, tools, and research to create a central location for growers, agronomists, researchers and the pulse industry. Rootrot.ca highlights these areas:

Agronomy: Provide growers with recommendations and tools for practical on-farm root rot risk assessment and management.
Breeding: Work towards the availability of robust genetic resistance to root rot pathogens into the future.
Pathology: Deepen understanding of biology, pathogenicity, and interactions of root rot pathogens in pulses.

Root diseases significantly impact yields and limit production for peas and lentils. Aphanomyces euteiches, Fusarium spp., and other fungal pathogens dominate the root rot complex. Eliminating this risk is essential for profitable and sustainable pea and lentil production in Western Canada. Work on pea and lentil root rot also provides insight into solutions for dry bean and soybean root rot – an important area of focus for Manitoba farmers.

In addition to the work led by the Pulse Root Rot Network, MPSG has invested over $1 million in root rot-related research from 2018-2024. This research has also been supported by previous federal-provincial programs and the current Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership AgriScience Program Clusters Component. MPSG intends to continue the search for a solution through an additional commitment of $150 thousand in 2025.

Click here to see more...

Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids