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."