Harvesting is finished on the majority of farms with the remainder of farms needing up to another week. Conditions remain dry for those growers still harvesting. Irrigation is ongoing in some of these cases to help reduce bruising and assist with moisture levels while curing, especially now that it is getting cooler.
Over the harvest season, bruising of mid-stalk tobacco was a problem on some farms, as was pole rot (causal organism Rhizopus arrhizus). Tobacco scrap infested with pole rot should not be spread on any fields used to grow tobacco. The infested scrap should be burned. Check with your local municipality regarding burning bylaws. Any infested tobacco debris left in empty kilns and bins should be removed and destroyed as well. Disinfecting kilns, bins and pins before using them again next season should also be undertaken in those situations where pole rot was an issue this year.
Similar to the past several years, there were no reports of Blue Mold in the Ontario tobacco crop in 2017.
Final harvesting pass in CTRF’s variety trials located near Aylmer, ON on September 28, 2017.
CTRF has now completed harvesting all of its variety trials for 2017. These trials are conducted in cooperation with growers on several farms. This year there were a total of 42 promising flue-cured varieties being tested in replicated trials, with some of these varieties being grown at multiple sites. Also, a promising variety, 13AA27-4, was released on a small-scale basis to a dozen growers this year. These growers will soon be surveyed as to their impressions of the variety. This information will assist with the evaluation of the variety once the agronomic performance of the variety is known from CTRF’s field trials.
Post prepared and sent by Canadian Tobacco Research Foundation
Mailing Address: CTRF, P.O. Box 322, Tillsonburg, ON N4G 4H5
Telephone: 519-842-8997
Web Address: http://ctrf1.com