Alert system means better agronomy decisions – Anglia Farmer

Created by the Allium & Brassica Centre, Brassica Alert now uses more sophisticated pheromone traps to detect the early presence of pests. It couples this with disease spore trapping and weather modelling to provide real-time risk assessments.

A traffic-light style system warns of the impending risk of ringspot and white blister, along with major pests, thrip, diamond back moth and silver Y moth. Growers and agronomists can opt to receive text updates to view the latest reports online.

Early season reports saw a low risk of ringspot in dry conditions, but a high-risk of white blister, which requires only limited leaf wetness to develop. Silver Y moth was identified at high-risk numbers on 90% of monitoring sites across the eastern counties.

Carl Sharp, of the Allium & Brassica Centre, said Brassica Alert enabled growers to move from an industry-standard fixed spray interval disease control programme to targeted applications choosing the most appropriate products at the most suitable time.

“Our independent trials have shown that two targeted fungicide applications indicated by Brassica Alert, gave comparative disease control, marketable yield and quality as using the standard four to five spray programme.

Syngenta digital agronomy specialist, Ed Flint said forecasting tools could help growers better target treatments and strengthen decision making. “The greatest benefit comes when you start to couple decision support tools together,” he added.