Crop Watch – Farmers Weekly

We saw a very wet spell in November and December which meant any field work, including spraying for barley yellow dwarf virus, was largely impossible. The wet episodes were broken by a very cold snap in early to mid-December and another one, accompanied by snow, in January.

Early planted forward crops suffered a bit in the snowy cold spell as growth was pushed down onto the ground, where patches have subsequently been frosted and then rotted. Apart from this, crops on the whole have come through the winter looking very well and carrying more biomass than usual.

Despite the cold spells, winter has been a fairly mild affair for the deep South West. This has created the larger-than-usual crops, in turn leading to many crops having some fairly ugly levels of foliar diseases.

Septoria is rife in earlier-drilled crops, with little difference between resistant and less-resistant varieties at this stage. Winter barley crops are carrying levels of all four major foliar diseases: rhynchosporium, net blotch, mildew and, in pockets, brown rust.

Oat disease

Winter oat crops have high levels of Septoria avenae while mildew and crown rust are not difficult to find. I know it is early, but unless we have a long dry period going into late March and April the season is shaping up to be very challenging from a disease control point of view.

On the plus side, large biomass crops have plenty of potential to yield well if managed properly.

Oilseed rape crops have done what they usually do over winter and shed biomass as lower leaves die back and the frost, snow and, in places, pigeons have all had their part to play as well.

Nitrogen management is going to be interesting, with most growers having bought at high prices and current crop values below where they need to be. The forward bulky crops coming out of winter have at least trapped a fair amount of N from the soil, so we will not be looking to apply large amounts to build biomass in all crops.

On the other hand, adequate N will need to be applied fairly early to ensure that we keep these larger crops going. The last thing we want to see now is crops shedding tillers which have taken energy to grow.

Should the season turn out to be a bad one for foliar diseases, supply chain issues are bound to be a bit of a problem, with most manufacturers producing finite amounts of fungicide, based largely on last year’s usage. Last year was hot and dry, so by no means a bad disease year.

There is plenty of potential out there at the moment. Let’s hope we are all able to realise it and that something comes along to nudge grain prices in the right direction.