The broken weather is driving disease pressure on wheat, barley, oats, and field beans, with these crops each facing different challenges.
With winter barley crops for example, which have had their final fungicide, the biggest remaining threat is Rumularia, according to Tom Gartland from Syngenta Ireland.
“The biggest remaining threat is Ramularia. If folpet was included in the final spray, that should deal with the issue,” he said.
Tom explained that spring barley is a mixed bag this season.
“Earlier-sown crops showed signs of net blotch early on. These crops should have had their T1 by now, so hopefully that challenge is cleared up.
“On later-sown crops, growers want a broad-spectrum value for money treatment at T1. Elatus Era fits the bill. It doesn’t have any gaps at T1 and the cost per hectare is competitive,” he said.
“Elatus Era can equally be used at T2 on spring barley,” he added.
“Always add Mirror (folpet) for Ramularia control and aim for the paintbrush stage of the crop. Mirror also adds useful activity on net blotch which will be a great help to growers where this disease is present.”
Winter wheat crops
Syngenta’s Billy Cotter explained that winter wheat crops are looking reasonably promising.
“The Septoria challenge has been relentless and keeping it at bay will be expensive,” he said.
“Irrespective of the main fungicide choice at T2, the best value and return on investment will be the folpet partner, which really has to be included at the full label rate – 1.5L/ha,” said Billy.
“Spring wheat is a different challenge. Yellow rust can often be the most damaging disease of spring wheat.
“Elatus Era is a great choice at either T1 or T2. While Septoria is not front and center as much on spring wheat, we always recommend the inclusions of Mirror (folpet) with Elatus Era,” he said.
According to Syngenta’s Frank McGauran, the oats acreage is similar to last year. Where autumn planting was missed, growers took the opportunity to plant a spring crop in February where the weather was favorable.
“Crown rust has been reported in crops from early April, though the peak infection period is really only beginning about now,” Frank said.
Elatus Era is now well established in the panicle emergence slot on both winter and spring oats. It is by far the best for crown rust control and Syngenta trials data shows significant yield benefits over any potential alternatives.
“Try to keep the Elatus Era treatment to that final panicle emergence stage – that’s where we see the best response. The only reason to go earlier is a significant early infection of crown rust, but that’s unlikely,” Frank added.
Spring-sown field beans are usually a two-spray fungicide programme – early and late flower. However, Syngenta’s John McCarthy explained how this year may be different.
“Early chocolate spot infection has brought some growers in earlier and this may necessitate a third fungicide spray. Chocolate spot is a very difficult disease to chase and spraying early has been the right choice where disease was getting established,” said John.
While chocolate spot is the main visible disease at the moment we can also expect bean rust to feature soon.
“Elatus Era covers both diseases and it can be used anywhere in the programme.
“Our experience tells us that early flowering is the optimum timing – the first spray in a two spray programme or middle spray if three are being used,” he said.
For further information on crop solutions available from Syngenta Ireland, click here.
