Crop Watch, East – Farmers Weekly – Ben Pledger

Spring drilling has gone relatively well, with most growers keeping last year in mind, and managing to conserve moisture to allow for good even emergence.

Late March’s cold nights and the lack of rain to wash fertiliser in has made for later development of some winter crops. Some winter barleys have barely stood up, and T0 fungicide timing on winter wheat has only just been reached on a good proportion of the crop.

Winter oats are now wanting their first plant growth regulator (PGR), and with this dryspell in mind, PGRs, fungicides and herbicides will all be split out into separate passes to reduce the stress to the crop. Prohexadione + trinexapac will be used for the PGR, and a tebuconazole + azoxystrobin tank mix will be applied a week later as the first fungicide.

The drier conditions haven’t seen a lot of broad-leaved weeds emerging yet, so herbicides will be kept in the can for the moment.

The yellow rust-prone varieties of winter wheat, such as Zyatt and Skyfall, have seen it come into the crop. This has been taken out with tebuconazole at T0, with the addition of azoxystrobin to protect going forward.

Although we are currently in more of a rust-favouring climate in the East, Septoria tritici is present in a lot of varieties, and if it becomes wetter, we could see this take off. If it does, it will be robustly controlled.

With the price of wheat being at an unprecedented high now, and fertiliser inputs costing significantly more than before, the relative difference to a gross margin between a robust fungicide strategy and an average one, to protect yield, will be less this year than in previous years.