Temperatures in the high twenties have encouraged crop and weed growth after a long cool spring. Flag leaves are out in most winter wheat crops, with reports from the south of boots splitting and wheat orange blossom midge taking advantage. Many oilseed rape crops are setting pods as the flowering phase passes. Lack of rain is the new problem, however, with many crops still waiting to take up significant amounts of applied fertilisers.
Late frosts, which normally rape crops can recover from, appear to have had a more severe effect this year. Crop effects are variable but there have been many reports of flower buds being completely killed and pod set drastically reduced. TAG is surveying such crops in an effort to determine any causal trends.
For several years now TAG has found that average daily air temperature is a reliable guide to timing of sclerotinia infection and hence of fungicide treatment. Oilseed rape is now coming into full flower and graphs showing the rolling average air temperatures at a number of sites around the UK are available in Members’ Technical Information, in ‘TAG Updates’.
As rape fields slowly turn from green to yellow, monitoring of average daily air temperatures suggests conditions are almost right for spore release from sclerotia of sclerotinia in the soil. The flowering fungicide discussion is all set to start up again in TAG Updates.
Five new varieties have been added to the BBRO/NIAB Recommended List of Sugar Beet Varieties for 2011. All new additions have rhizomania tolerance, with two also having tolerance to beet cyst nematode (BCN).
From KWS comes Rosalinda KWS with a very high yield potential and Annouschka KWS which incorporates BCN tolerance. Valeska, from Nickerson Sugar Beet Seed Ltd, also shows a very high yield potential. Elsoms’ SESVANDEHAVE-bred Cheetah couples high yields with relatively high sugar content levels.
Two years of trials with Syngenta’s new SDHI fungicide Bontima feature in our latest New product Guide, along with detailed product information and TAG’s view on if and where it should be used.
After a long wait for soil temperatures to reach a level where weed control can resume, they show no signs yet of reaching double figures and crop and weed growth is still slow. Some areas reached 8-9oC before Easter but in some parts they have slipped back to 6oC.
With many oilseed rape crops defoliated by pigeons and cold weather, growth regulation for canopy management is less of an issue now, but growers with healthy, bulky crops may still need to make decisions on whether to make the investment, before the crop passes the yellow bud stage.
Ensuring a load of barley is the correct variety will be faster and easier with the launch of a new interactive web-based identification program.
‘Barley-id’ has been developed by NIAB and is available as a subscription service to anyone involved in the transport, trading, marketing and processing of barley where varietal identity is essential. It will also be used as a training tool in NIAB’s grain ID workshops and courses.
