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The International Rapeseed Congress
Sydney, Australia
24th – 27th September 2023
Having arrived in Sydney a few days before the conference started, this allowed me to acclimatise to the time difference and explore this extraordinary city before getting engulfed by the wealth of new information and novel findings in the field of oilseed rape (or canola since we were in Australia). My initial explorations took me to all the famous Sydney Harbour tourist must-sees. These included the Sydney Opera house, Sydney Bridge and The Rocks; famed for being the first place that Captain Cook set foot on the land that we call Australia. However, I had been told by a friend that the best way to see these landmarks was from the harbour just as the sun starts to set. This sounded like a challenge for the inner photographer in me so I checked the sunset times and boarded the ferry to Manly in full knowledge that the optimal time to capture this landscape in all its glory was going to be on the return leg of this ferry at around 5.30-45. Mission Accomplished.
With my body clock partially adjusted to being 9 hours in the future, I continued my treasure map of Sydney with a trip out to Bondi beach. With waves lapping softly across the 1km of golden sand crescent beach, I sat and watched the surfers showcasing their skills on the larger waves further out to sea. Could I visit one of the most famous beaches in the world and not go for a paddle? Not a chance!!! The alure was too overwhelming, I donned my swim shorts and set off into the waves to make the most of this amazing experience. After indulging my inner big kid for nearly an hour, it was lunch time. I sat at a stunning beach front café tucking into a classic ‘fish of the day’ and chips absorbing in the spectacular view and unfortunately too much UV. It was at this moment that I realised that most of my sun-cream must have washed off. I had turned a shade of ‘Rouge de Tomato’; just what I wanted as my first impression for fellow delegates at the start of the conference the following afternoon. Classic Englishman at the beach.
There was a workshop on clubroot, a disease caused by Plasmodiophora brassicae, that brought together 40-50 of the leading researchers from across the world to share their novel findings about the identification of candidate resistance genes, progressive management strategies and continental distribution. I found the presentation by Dr Nazinin Zamani-Noor particularly interesting as it provided evidence to support my fears that the use of brassicas in our cover crop mixes can increase risk of clubroot to an area but also select for more virulent populations, to put increasing pressure on our already stressed ‘clubroot-resistant’ cultivars of oilseed rape. After this session, it was time for the very extravagant conference ‘Welcome Drinks’ onboard a super-yacht around the Sydney Harbour at night. This was a great opportunity to catch up with both familiar and new faces from around the world. This is always one of my favourite parts of international conferences as it enables positive discussions to obtain a general overview of the major problems affecting the crop/s in their respective countries before the intense and highly detailed presentations throughout the conference.
I thought that the programme for the conference was very well organised. It was arranged into morning plenary sessions that covered many of the challenges facing the rapeseeds industry such as climate change, pest and disease, diversification of practice and products, as well as developments into the use of GE/GM. Then three blocks of daily concurrent sessions, grouped into four major categories; Genetics, Pest/Pathogen, Agronomy and tools, and Products and markets. Each of these categories were in their own room for the entirety of the conference. This meant that it was very clear as to where to go for specific sessions, made easier with all sessions being very strict on timings and a 2 minute interval for movement between rooms after presentations. As a plant pathologist at heart, I spent the majority of my time in the pest and disease sessions about Blackleg (phoma), clubroot, sclerotinia, insect pests, other diseases. Although, I was a keen advocate for moving around the different sessions to hear presentations about new climate and land-use models in Australia, effects of the global fluctuations in OSR price as a result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the influence of private sector funding to OSR production.
However the primary reason for my attendance at this conference was that I had the privilege to present my findings from my most recent paper titled ‘Leptosphaeria biglobosa can inhibit the production of Sirodemsin PL by L. maculans’. The main findings presented were;
- The production of Sirodesmin PL is inhibited when L. biglobosa and L. maculans are simultaneously co-inoculated in both in vitro and in planta using bio-assays, HPLC and LC-MS.
- This pattern was not observed when sequential (7 days apart) co-inoculation occurred in vitro.
- The production of Sirodesmin PL appeared to be inhibited rather than broken down due to the lack of precursors or final products being found in the analytical chemistry results.
- When simultaneous co-inoculation of L. biglobosa and L. maculans was done in planta to simulate recent changes in ascospore production using qPCR spore trapping, the lesions were smaller and more characteristic of L. biglobosa suggesting that competition domination had occurred.
These findings have agronomic impact to UK growers because the observed changes in ascospore release timings may affect the size and appearance of the lesions that are used as an indicator, as suggested by the AHDB, for fungicide application. There are no commercial varieties with known resistance to L. biglobosa. Therefore L. biglobosa management is reliant on fungicide control, so if the lesions are smaller and are not characteristic symptoms this may mean that fungicide applications are being made later so crops remain vulnerable and exposed to infection for longer without protection.
I thoroughly enjoyed giving this presentation as I was able to achieve one of my academic research goals to give an oral presentation about my oilseed research at the International Rapeseed Congress (IRC). This whole experience was even more fulfilling because I had attended the Berlin IRC in 2019, to present my poster about the preliminary findings of the paper. I was overwhelmed when one of the world leaders in this field of research took an interest is this work and joked that she’d look forward to me presentation in Sydney in 2023. Fast-forward 4 years… this was exactly what happened with me presenting my work in the same concurrent session as her in Sydney.
This has been an amazing experience and one that I will treasure for the rest of my career. I have gained a wealth of invaluable knowledge about oilseed rape and other brassicas that I can share with my team at Vegetable Consultancy Services (UK) Ltd in those specific crops and have been able to draw many new parallels for the crops that we are industry leaders in; onions, carrots and parsnips. I would like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to the BSPP for their very generous travel grant that when partnered with funding from VCS has enabled me to attend this conference. I am also very appreciative to the University of Hertfordshire, ADAS, Felix Thornley Agricultural Trust and Chadacre Agricultural Trust for their unwavering support and funding to allow me to do this PhD research.
Dr James A. Fortune
Vegetable Consultancy Services (UK) Ltd.
