Crop Watch: Spring drilling progress and T0s in winter wheat – Farmers Weekly
Spring drilling is well under way across the UK and crops are generally going in pretty good conditions ...
East: Rory Kissock – Farmacy (Essex, Herts, Cambs and Suffolk)
The weather can’t make its mind up which season we are in. Locally, we have had snow flurries, sleet showers, bitter winds and stunning sunshine – and that’s only in the past 10 days.
On the whole, winter cereals are entering the spring in good shape. Biomass is slightly down on average, but this would correlate with high rainfall and low sunlight since drilling.
Disease levels in the crops at the moment are low. Both yellow and brown rust can’t be found yet, but that’s not to say they will not appear in the normal varieties such as Skyfall, Zyatt and Crusoe.
The use of azole chemistry at this timing will help to reduce rust pressure. Tebuconazole or metconazole would be suitable for this.
The addition of a strobilurin at T0 will help to give added persistence to the rust protection.
Earlier drilled wheats do have some low levels of septoria on the decaying leaf which should watched. The addition of folpet at T0 would help to keep the upper canopy clean.
Tiller numbers are down on average, and even more so on later drilled wheat crops. These will require some gentle manipulation from trinexapac-ethyl to suppress apical dominance and encourage rooting.
This, combined with either a biostimulant or a phosphite application, can have good effects on canopy manipulation.
Spring cereals
Wheat, barley and oats have been drilled in recent weeks, most of which have gone into well-weathered seed-beds which have been rolled down to conserve moisture and prevent pest problems.
Some spring crops have been cut straight into Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) covers, which will require ongoing monitoring for slugs as they are very prevalent in these crops.
For those still-to-drill spring crops, understanding seeds/sq m and all the losses associated to achieve adequate target plant populations are very important to achieve successful yields.
There are murmurs of sugar beet drilling starting, but growers should be reminded of variety choice and bolting numbers associated.
If soils remain cold then establishment could be slow and a pre-emergence herbicide might be considered. This should delay the first post-emergence herbicide and allow the beet to get away.
The main options would be around metamitron, quinmerac and ethofumesate. But remember that there is a limit of 1,000g/ha ethofumesate in any three-year period
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