Harvest 2024 is upon us. There is high pressure building and it will, undoubtedly, be the ‘cue-call’ for farmers to get combines rolling for the first time this year.
Many early crops of winter barley are ready to be cut. There’s no point regurgitating all the downsides to tillage farming this year. All the relevant issues have been well aired.
Invariably, there are two sides to every coin, which means there will always be something positive to take away from whatever experience that comes everyone’s way in life.
And where tillage in 2024 is concerned, the most uplifting development so far identified has to be the resilience demonstrated by all cereals.
Harvest 2024 yields
Many winter barley and wheat almost written off earlier in the spring bounced back once the drier and warmer conditions arrived in late April and early May. What’s more, it only took a fortnight’s decent weather to bring this transition about.
Yes, parts of many fields retain the scars of areas that got totally clobbered last autumn and winter.
But in those locations where plants did manage to hang on, in any sense, decent enough yields can be expected over the coming weeks.
And, of course, none of this has come about by accident. Improved plant breeding techniques have revolutionised the resilience of new cereal varieties. And there is so much more to come in this regard.
Plant breeders are fast getting to grips with the challenge posed by Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV). Tolerance to the condition is now a reality in many varieties.
This offers the hope of full blown resistance being available across the spectrum of all cereal varieties in the not too distant future.
Beyond this, the development of cereal varieties with inherent resistance to the gamut of fungal diseases that attack crops can be an expectation, rather than a hope, within the foreseeable future.
Barry O’Reilly, head of the crops testing and certification division within the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) spoke at the recent cereal varieties open day in Co. Cork.
He highlighted the interest now being shown by the European Union in the use of new gene-based technologies within the world of plant breeding.
Assuming these developments are allowed to take place, the potential to improve arable crop performance levels is set to escalate at an exponential level.
All of this is fantastic news for Ireland’s tillage sector. Â