Teagasc’s National Tillage Conference takes place next week (26 January) at the Lyrath Hotel in Kilkenny. This year’s conference promises a broad range of subject matter, with a lot of short snappy papers targeted at growers.

Markets, prices and volatility are the theme for the morning session. The potential to use wheat for distilling, opportunities to increase market size for beans and oilseed rape and the new maize production and trading guide are all of direct interest to growers. Managing price volatility will also be discussed and David Walsh-Kemmis will give a grower’s perspective on the things he is doing to help add value to his farm produce.

Afternoon session

The afternoon session will give an update on disease resistance across all our cereals and on disease control in barley. Monitoring appears to suggest no major change in the SDHI situation re septoria but there are some signs of problems in net blotch. It would also seem that ramularia is developing resistance to the strobilurins. And the work on disease control in barley would indicate that many growers could be spending too much for profitable production.

A separate presentation on variety evaluation assesses the usefulness, or otherwise, of some of the characteristics used on the recommended lists.

This year there is a series of short presentations which outline the range of research projects currently under way. These include an update on resistance in some of our major grassweeds and we have reason to be very concerned about blackgrass and wild oats. There is a project on planting systems, row width and seeding rates in oilseed rape.

An evaluation of the factors which influence eyespot. Work on aphids and BYDV control. An introduction to the new technology of gene editing and efforts to understand the basis of durable septoria resistance.

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Tillage management: untypical opportunities to be out on land