Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture is holding their Crop Diagnostic School this week in Swift Current.

About 250 people are taking part in the event over the three days with about 40 to 50 volunteers each day.

One of the stations focuses on Disease Scouting and Identification.

Provincial Disease Specialist Barb Ziesman talked about some of the disease issues that we’ve seen in wheat this year:

"Well with wheat- diseases really are thriving this year, so we started with the stem rust, especially in winter wheat we're seeing that. We're seeing  a lot of foliar diseases, so the leaf spots, the leaf spot complex, almost all of them are showing up this year, and fusarium headlight, especially coming up now and just recently as the wheat is coming into head, that's been a major concern, we've had very conducive conditions, and it's going to be a bit of a problem in some areas,"

She says the rain has really impacted pulse crops especially lentils:

"Lentils really don't like to have wet feet, so we were seeing quite a bit of root rot, so the plants were stressed, they're more susceptible to damage from any of the pathogens in the soil. We are seeing fusarium root rot, we are seeing pythium and aphanomyces as well. And with that moisture, we're also starting to see some of that anthracnose and ascochyta showing up, and some sclerotinia in some areas as well," she said.

She reminds producers that as we get closer to harvest it’s very important to watch label directions and pre-harvest intervals to avoid marketing problems.