June 26th 1999

REPS winter crops show potential

By Andy Doyle

EARLIER this week I attended a crop walk on a tillage farm in South Kildare, which was organised by Minnock Agri Enterprises in Carlow.

This must have been one of the first times I saw winter cereals and beet grown under REPS and these crops looked very impressive.

The farm walk took place on Peter Carbery's farm at Tankardstown near Athy. Peter also has a sheep enterprise but the tillage is run as a rotation with beet and oats on continuous tillage land. It was disturbing, though, to see loose smut in oats for the first time.

Under REPS the main field requirements are an adequate idle margin by the hedges, no growth regulator except on oats and restrictions on nitrogen usage.

These latter two constraints tend to favour spring cereal farms but in this case all crops are autumn drilled.

Spring barley tends to be the automatic choice for REPS growers but Peter said that he could never get high yields from this crop and has stayed with winter barley instead.

Winter barley

The first crop of winter barley Pat Minnock took us to was Regina, sown at eight stones per acre on September 23. It received a total of 120 units of N and 17 units of P per acre.

Apart from nitrogen and growth regulator most other husbandry was `normal' with three fungicides; Stereo plus Fortress Duo, Amistar plus Punch C and Amistar plus Folicur.

This crop looked on the heavy side and had the potential to lodge even with only 120 units. While many crops in the region would get more nitrogen than this it certainly looked as though this one had enough.

There was still plenty of life in the crop and it was quite clean. Even if yield was slightly lower there was a £28 per acre lower cost than standard costings as well as the REPS payment.

A second crop of Vertige was more turned and more of the lower leaves were dying off, despite having had the same fungicide regime.

There was an amount of rhyncho present also but not as much as I have seen in other crops at earlier development stages. Much of what was present was said to have appeared in recent days, along with an amount of what looked like the spot form of net blotch.

This crop looked less likely to fall and may be slightly at the loss of a bit more nitrogen. Much more of the lower leaves had died off at that stage but it looked as though they senesced rather than were killed.

The general management of this crop was similar to the Regina but costs were lower because no phosphate was applied to this crop.

Winter wheat

We went into one crop of winter wheat that looked a little on the thin side. Most felt that this could have done with at least an extra bag of nitrogen but the colour was still good and there was not excessive signs of the lower leaves dying off to feed the filling of the head.

Head count was on the low side but with four grains in most spiklets it still had good yield potential if it filled well. The crop was generally clean enough except for some scutch.

The variety Windsor is weak strawed and would not look like the ideal choice for no growth regulator. On the other hand the lower nitrogen level (127 units) lessens the lodging pressure considerably. Windsor was chosen, not because of its particular suitability but rather because Peter could get a seed contract for this variety.

Beet

Beet has always been controversial with regard to its suitability for REPS. However, this is much more because of the phosphate restriction than because of the nitrogen restriction.

There were two varieties in the field, Celt and Libra, and both looked well and were meeting in the row earlier this week.

The total amount on nitrogen used was 114 units along with 33 units of phosphate per acre and of course potash.

Weed control was based on two Debut/Betanal Progress mixtures (other products also) and this looked to have done the job. There were a few odd weeds coming back and an odd dock present.

Oats

The oats was particularly good in that it was as heavy as anything you would see around. The total of 96 units of nitrogen used meant no cutback and the use of three Ceraide's left the straw with a good spring and well capable of standing up to normal lodging pressures.

In general this early October sown crop of Barra was clean except for the occasional unexplainable streak on the leaf.

But there had been a few lesions of crown rust present which were ably dealt with the Amistar (0.62 l/ha) plus Folicur (0.4 l/ha) in the last spray. The crop was well into grain fill and was almost at the doughy stage.

One disturbing feature of this crop had nothing whatsoever to do with it being in REPS. There was quite an amount of loose smut to be found where complete panicles had been destroyed, as would be the case with barley.