Spraying

Rain over the weekend and early this week made conditions difficult for spraying, which may now be building up on some farms with many fungicide applications due. However, the weekend and into next week looks more settled.

Awns are now emerging, at early emergence, or heads are coming out on many March-sown spring barley crops, while many later sown crops are further behind.

Many will be targeting the final fungicide on spring barley at the paintbrush stage when awns are coming out, but rain and wind have delayed this spray.

Given the broken weather of late, advice is to spray those crops with awns out once weather allows.

There is rhynchosprium and net blotch present on crops and while it has been cool at times in recent days, rain and warm conditions on some days will help to drive disease where timings have been delayed.

An SDHI, along with prothioconazole should really be applied here, with Folpet for ramularia control. Where disease pressure is low a half rate may suffice. Some farmers may choose to go with a triazole and strobilurin mix instead of an SDHI.

Spring crops

Spring beans are another crop which is probably in need of attention on many farms. A large number of crops of beans were planted in mid to late March and these crops are now flowering.

Signum at 0.5-0.75kg/ha is a good option as a first fungicide and should be applied at a high rate where farmers are trying to keep crops to one spray.

Phosphites can help with the control of downy mildew and some farmers will add this to the mix. Elatus Era is also cleared for use on beans and can be applied at 0.66L/ha, while an Amistar and tebuconazole mix is another option.

Spring wheat and oat crops vary between second node and flag leaf emergence. Both might receive a fungicide once the flag leaves are emerged, depending on disease pressure and what you did previously.

Final sprays will be triazole mixtures like Prosaro, Gleam or Magnello. It is unlikely that Folpet will be of benefit in this timing because the septoria levels are so low.

Early spring oat crops are booting with some ears breaking through. Target final oat sprays when the heads are out. This will be a triazole plus strobilurin or SDHI, possibly with a morpholine.

Flowering

On balance the weather has been reasonably good for flowering in winter barley – nice and slow – so hopefully the big ear sizes can be matched by good grain fill and that they will translate into yield.

Winter oat crops should receive a final fungicide once they are eared out. Many winter wheat crops are now fully eared out and moving into flowering.

Final spays should be applied close to mid flowering but that is difficult to assess.

The duration of flowering is highly influenced by weather and temperature. It can be as quick as 14 days in warm sunny conditions but can last for more than 21 days in cool cloudy conditions.

A prothioconazole/tebuconazole mix should do the trick here at 80% of the rate at least. If rust or mildew is present a morpholine may be added.