Teagasc is to host a specific conference on septoria next March, ahead of the critical disease-control season. The conference is to be targeted at growers, advisers and consultants and the one-day event should be a diary appointment.

It will focus heavily on fungicide resistance and discuss this from a local to a continental perspective.

Wheat growers know and realise that the resistance challenge increases over time and there are many who now feel the inevitable may well happen shortly. This would mean field resistance to the SDHI family, as the warning shots have already been fired across the bow.

There are new actives coming through the pipeline and some of these will be from new families of fungicide chemistry. However, the question is will any of them be with us in time to help protect the SDHIs? Or, indeed, will they themselves prove durable over time?

Attendees will be updated as to what actives may be coming down the line.

It is critical that all involved in the sector understand why resistance problems have intensified in recent years. It seems unlikely that any highly active product will be immune from resistance development so we must become more aware of the husbandry factors that help to protect or expose products to resistance development.

Such actions, otherwise known as integrated pest management, will be essential for the future protection of all our disease-control tools and any new actives that may come to the market in the years ahead.