Tackling the disease threat on crops

Crops don’t look too bad despite the drought conditions, but there is still a lot of disease there.

On the 5,000 hectares I'm walking in North Herefordshire, we’re lucky to have deep soils so the dry weather isn't currently having the same negative impact on crops as other areas and they’ve rooted well. However, where I've got farmers on lighter land, crops are really starting to show signs of drought stress.

Timings are on track, leaf 3 is emerged and T1 sprays went on from the April 19 onwards, apart from some very early varieties such as Lili that went on earlier in April.

The season has been all over the place in this respect. There are major variations depending on variety, soil type, and drilling date, even within my patch.

Generally, leaf 4 is clean but leaf 5 is carrying disease and is something to keep an eye on, especially as leaf 6, 7, and 8 are still there on earlier drilled crops. This can really harbour and spread disease up the plant if you don’t manage the risk properly.

We’re regularly seeing a heavy dew and while crop walking you’ll see leaves moving and touching so there is plenty of chance for disease inoculum to spread, and once it starts cycling, things can change very quickly.

We want T1 to act as a disease barrier for leaf 2, so we’ve used a much more robust T1, but the main spend is still reserved for T2.

For T2 you're really looking for a powerful, persistent SDHI fungicide that offers good all-round disease control. You want a product that will keep you on track.

Elatus Era is a new SDHI on the market that has proven its persistency in trial work. It will be a sensible T2 solution that offers that all-round control and we know it’s reliable on rust. We’ll be looking to use it on Reflection, for example.

David Lines is an Association of Independent Crop Consultants agronomist