Soils Saturated Heavily - What Now?

Jan 27, 2023

By Mark Bolda

Along with the rising waters of the past few weeks, concerns about the status of our strawberries have risen as well.

For their part strawberry roots, as you can see from paragraph #6 out of the book "Small Fruit Management” by Galleta and Himelrick, depend on oxygen. Soil waterlogging will kill the feeder rootlets important for plant development and nutrient uptake; of course as conditions improve they will be replaced, but all of this takes time and energy from the plant. The magnitude of damage for each field is going to depend on the length of the waterlogging and the temperatures (read – the warmer the better for the plant). Too, and this is underlined by the writing on paragraph #6, this waterlogging also favors the development and the root invasion of damaging fungi, which for our area usually means Phytophthora.

I've been asked about what the extent of the damage here will be, and of course the answer is going to be it depends. We are already in the main lagging by a week or two because of the cool and dark conditions of the past few weeks, and fields that are saturated or even under water for lengthy periods of time will be set back more than that.

Phytophthora

Source : ucanr.edu

Video: Finding a Balance of Innovation and Regulation - Dr. Peter Facchini

Regulations help markets and industry exist on level playing fields, keeping consumers safe and innovation from going too far. However, incredibly strict regulations can stunt innovation and cause entire industries to wither away. Dr. Peter James Facchini brings his perspective on how existing regulations have slowed the advancement of medical developments within Canada. Given the international concern of opium poppy’s illicit potential, Health Canada must abide by this global policy. But with modern technology pushing the development of many pharmaceuticals to being grown via fermentation, is it time to reconsider the rules?

Dr. Peter James Facchini leads research into the metabolic biochemistry in opium poppy at the University of Calgary. For more than 30 years, his work has contributed to the increased availability of benzylisoquinoline alkaloid biosynthetic genes to assist in the creation of morphine for pharmaceutical use. Dr. Facchini completed his B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at the University of Toronto before completing Postdoctoral Fellowships in Biochemistry at the University of Kentucky in 1992 & Université de Montréal in 1995.