The Editor's Desk

Productive = healthy

A person crouches near freshly tilled soil. They are sifting through a handful of brown dirt.

Productive soil is healthy soil. If farmed soil is not productive, it needs help. The soil health equation doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. Cornell University, in its Comprehensive Assessment of Soil Health, provides a long list of potential soil health indicators, including 17 physical, 11 biological and 15 chemical. Physical indicators include...

Feature

Animal breeders blazed the trail on complex traits

Animal geneticists pioneered new tools to tackle complex traits. That expertise is coming to crops and could mean improvements to complex traits such as heat tolerance and nutrient use efficiency in canola.

Feature

Comfortable settings

A combine harvester harvests dry canola plants in a wide open field.

What combine settings are best for lower canola losses and higher productivity? It varies by machine and by conditions. Experts are here to help.

Farmer Panel

How’s the weather?

We ask our six new panelists what tools, apps or expertise they use to make somewhat better decisions based on long-term and short-term weather predictions.

The Editor's Desk

Seed Right

A drill is for seeding. So, do one-pass air drills that apply both seed and all fertilizer do a disservice to canola stand establishment? That question came up during a Canola Council of Canada (CCC) agronomy team discussion on yield-limiting factors and what we can do about them. Summer heat, flea beetles and low plant...