The past few weeks provided many opportunities to visit and see both current and potential future varieties of all combinable crops. Annual events organised by the Irish Seed Trade Association, Goldcrop, Seedtech and Drummonds provided these opportunities for trade and growers alike.

Every year provides fresh challenges and opportunities. For most, 2018 has been a low disease pressure year and winter barley has been the only crop to suffer lodging pressure. Lack of differences are a challenge for those involved in variety and fungicide trials, as the effort and cost of trialling returns little benefit in such years. That said, there are always exceptions.

A few barley trial sites suffered either bad rhyncho or significant net blotch. Septoria always generates a significant challenge at the Seedtech site, but not this year.

The Goldcrop site in Cork was really the only one to show significant and continuous septoria pressure this year.

It is encouraging to new varieties of all crops coming through with improved disease resistance combined with good agronomic characteristics. Some of these will be the varieties of the future and this resistance is essential to help protect the new fungicides.

I must also comment on the work being done by all the seed and private companies which are helping to screen a huge number of crop varieties for their suitability in our climate.

Nigel Whyte (right), commercial director at Seedtech, speaks to one of the groups on the merits of oilseed rape at the recent open day.

Rain at Goldcrop

A significant shower of rain a few weeks ago may well be the main difference between Goldcrop and most other trial sites. The standout crop there in terms of appearance was possibly the spring oats planted on 5 May. This looks to be a great crop. Nice height, clean to the ground and with all leaves intact.

Isabel was the main crop, but all varieties looked well. And there was virtually no blasting or abortion of grain sites at the base of the ear, which implied that the crop had not been heavily stressed.

The spring barley was very decent too compared with some other sites. Attention to detail and soil conditions for seedbed preparation have always been important at that site and I guess it was helped by the rain.

There were a few really nice-looking clean new winter wheat varieties being tested and I hope they make it through.

Winter wheat

There were a good few varieties coming through evaluation that are close to recommendation if they can make the cut. Some of these are interesting and different.

But Conros is the only wheat up for recommendation this autumn. It is a slow developer and so suited to early drilling, has good yield, straw and disease resistance, with good grain quality and resistance to sprouting.

Others coming through the system include:

  • Cellule: a strong, clean, awned and very early maturing variety, similar to Soissons of old and from the same breeder. There will be seed availability this autumn.
  • Graham: still a year from recommendation, but it was grown in 2018 and accounts for 7% of seed availability for 2019. It is high-yielding with good straw and good septoria and sprouting resistance, but is weak on eyespot. May be best suited to first wheat slots. Shows tipping.
  • MH 15-63: another high-yielder. It has Leeds as a parent, but looked tall and clean.
  • KWS Zyatt: a milling wheat with very good grain quality characteristics. It is solid on yield, straw and disease. Sprouting may be a concern.

    • Winter barley

    Crops were largely on the point of harvest, so there was little to indicate disease resistance. There were bits of lodging, but not always related to straw strength only.

    There are four varieties up for recommendation:

  • Carneval: might best be described as a potential two-row replacement for Cassia, with excellent grain quality and good straw. Weak on mildew, but good on other diseases.
  • Pixel: a new conventional six-row with very high yield potential. It has an untypical combination of small ears and high ear number for a six-row. Straw is relatively short and it has good lodging resistance, but is prone to brackling. It is early maturing and has very good specific weight.
  • Belfry and Bazooka: two new six-row hybrids. They are both very high yielding and have very good disease resistance. Specific weights are quite good for both varieties. Belfry seems to be a step up on straw characteristics for hybrids.

    • Further away is the two-row variety Valerie. This has high yield with very good grain quality. Good straw and OK disease resistance, apart from mildew. Early maturing.

    Oats

    There are two oat varieties in contention for the winter and spring recommended lists. These are Delfin and WPB Isabel.

  • Delfin: a very high-yielding oat variety with good resistance to mildew and crown rust and excellent straw strength. However, it is a yellow oat and so different to our traditional white oat varieties. Specific weight is not very high.
  • WPB Isabel: also has high yield, combined with higher specific weight and kernel content than Barra. Straw strength and lodging resistance are good, as is disease resistance.

    • Spring barley

    There are a number of spring barley varieties up for consideration this year. These include:

  • KWS Cantton: has been a consistent performer to date, with high yield, good disease resistance and good specific weight. But there is a concern about its straw.
  • Prospect: is a non-GN variety, with high yield potential. It has good disease resistance, except for net blotch. Straw strength is similar to Planet. Specific weight is average.
  • SY Errigal and SY Arderin: both potential malting types, with high yield potential. Both are said to be good on straw and disease resistance.

    • Input trials

    Some of the various open days also dealt with crop inputs. Syngenta does continuous disease assessment at the Seedtech site and Drummonds assesses a range of crop inputs as well as varieties.

    The Seedtech site is normally challenged by septoria but not this year. This was a big pity because many of the fungicide treatments looked at options that may be increasingly important given the challenge to the re-registration of chlorothalonil.

    Billy Cotter of Syngenta explained the threat to this important active and suggested that a 750g/ha rate (1.5 l/ha) total rate may be the best possible outcome.

    Active

    This would apply to the active rather than any individual product so the trial treatments asked how best to use this total rate.

    Unfortunately, circumstances have conspired against getting results on these questions in 2018.

    The various disease control trials at the Drummonds site are also likely to show little in the way of programme comparisons due to the virtual absence of disease pressure. But the different fungicide trials may still show yield effects arising from physiological characteristics.

    Testing at Drummonds did show some visible responses though.

    Plots treated with a water treatment product, along with the fungicide, looked interesting at this point. And the plot treated with the recommended 6.0 l/ha of Final K certainly showed a visible response on the day.

    The work at Drummonds is now looking at a range of biological products also.