Article taken from the Agronomist & Arable Farmer Vegetable Guide
An unhealthy plant will never realise its full potential, in terms of both quality and marketable yield. Competition between retailers is based on price alone, with quality taken as a given. This means the market for lower quality produce is limited and extremely unprofitable.
It is easier and more cost-effective to prevent disease from getting a hold in the crop than it is trying to cure plants once they become infected. Healthy plants start with healthy seed. It pays to use good plant raisers or those who are assured to the Plant Propagation Material (PPM) Standard. It is also well worth visiting propagators to see your plants on a regular basis.
Wherever possible, choose varieties with a high level of genetic resistance to disease, ensuring that other traits both fit your farming system and are acceptable for the targeted market. Growers should also keep abreast of new developments by visiting breeders’ annual trials that show new varieties, and/or by carrying out their own trials to see what best suits their own farms and customers.
Treatments and controls
Growers should take time to talk to seed suppliers about fungicide treatments and controls so they understand what is available for the particular crop and varieties they have in mind. It is a false economy not to use seed treatments where available, as they provide early protection at the highly important germination and young seedling stage, when plants are particularly prone to damage and even death.
Delivering active ingredients this way to protect plants during these early stages in their life is more cost-effective than foliar applications and environmentally more acceptable. This is because the quantities needed when loaded onto seed are far less than would need to be applied directly to the small target.
Taking steps to reduce the local disease burden can also play a key role in keeping crops healthy, through in-field and on-farm hygiene and housekeeping. This is often overlooked. Measures such as the immediate destruction of post-harvest crop residues through desiccation and/or burial breaks the carryover disease from one crop or season to the next. So too does controlling re-growth in grading heaps and dumps.
Understanding the conditions that favour the development and timing of different diseases is important to understand how best to prevent and control them. These days, this does not necessarily mean having to brush up on the homework – Agrovista’s Plantsystems disease-forecasting services used local weather records and forecasts combined with accurate plant disease models to forecast the development of disease and will notify subscribers of progress on a daily basis.
This degree of knowledge allows the every-decreasing armoury of preventative and curative plant protection products to be applied at the times they are likely to be most effective and/or at the times of highest disease risk. This targeted application will not only help preserve actives but, given that many can now only be used at restricted number of applications, will also help get the most out of their more limited activity.
This is important both economically and in terms of selecting for resistance. That said, alternating products containing actives from different chemical groups is the most effective way of reducing the opportunity for disease to acquire resistance.
Wherever possible, using two or more fungicide groups in a single application is good practice. Single-site fungicides should be used with caution, backed up wherever possible by a robust multisite active or formulation (which acts on several metabolic pathways in the pathogen), which is far less prone to breaking down to resistance.
Application technology is also critical to ensure these pesticides are applied evenly across the crop and accurately onto the target. Given the wide range of crop type and growth habits, there is no simple answer – a field of brassicas mid-season might represent a largely horizontal target with difficult-to-reach under-leaf areas, while onions or leeks present a near-vertical target that require a very different approach.
Application advice
Agrovista agronomists can advise on all aspects of application technology, in choosing the best nozzles, water volumes and boom heights to hit these various targets more effectively.
Finally, regular assessment of the crop and discussions with buers is essential in order to plant the most likely harvest periods and therefore the use of fungicides that provide for the appropriate harvest interval.
An unhealthy plant will never realise its full potential, in terms of both quality and marketable yield. Competition between retailers is based on price alone, with quality taken as a given. This means the market for lower quality produce is limited and extremely unprofitable.
It is easier and more cost-effective to prevent disease from getting a hold in the crop than it is trying to cure plants once they become infected. Healthy plants start with healthy seed. It pays to use good plant raisers or those who are assured to the Plant Propagation Material (PPM) Standard. It is also well worth visiting propagators to see your plants on a regular basis.
Wherever possible, choose varieties with a high level of genetic resistance to disease, ensuring that other traits both fit your farming system and are acceptable for the targeted market. Growers should also keep abreast of new developments by visiting breeders’ annual trials that show new varieties, and/or by carrying out their own trials to see what best suits their own farms and customers.
Treatments and controls
Growers should take time to talk to seed suppliers about fungicide treatments and controls so they understand what is available for the particular crop and varieties they have in mind. It is a false economy not to use seed treatments where available, as they provide early protection at the highly important germination and young seedling stage, when plants are particularly prone to damage and even death.
Delivering active ingredients this way to protect plants during these early stages in their life is more cost-effective than foliar applications and environmentally more acceptable. This is because the quantities needed when loaded onto seed are far less than would need to be applied directly to the small target.
Taking steps to reduce the local disease burden can also play a key role in keeping crops healthy, through in-field and on-farm hygiene and housekeeping. This is often overlooked. Measures such as the immediate destruction of post-harvest crop residues through desiccation and/or burial breaks the carryover disease from one crop or season to the next. So too does controlling re-growth in grading heaps and dumps.
Understanding the conditions that favour the development and timing of different diseases is important to understand how best to prevent and control them. These days, this does not necessarily mean having to brush up on the homework – Agrovista’s Plantsystems disease-forecasting services used local weather records and forecasts combined with accurate plant disease models to forecast the development of disease and will notify subscribers of progress on a daily basis.
This degree of knowledge allows the every-decreasing armoury of preventative and curative plant protection products to be applied at the times they are likely to be most effective and/or at the times of highest disease risk. This targeted application will not only help preserve actives but, given that many can now only be used at restricted number of applications, will also help get the most out of their more limited activity.
This is important both economically and in terms of selecting for resistance. That said, alternating products containing actives from different chemical groups is the most effective way of reducing the opportunity for disease to acquire resistance.
Wherever possible, using two or more fungicide groups in a single application is good practice. Single-site fungicides should be used with caution, backed up wherever possible by a robust multisite active or formulation (which acts on several metabolic pathways in the pathogen), which is far less prone to breaking down to resistance.
Application technology is also critical to ensure these pesticides are applied evenly across the crop and accurately onto the target. Given the wide range of crop type and growth habits, there is no simple answer – a field of brassicas mid-season might represent a largely horizontal target with difficult-to-reach under-leaf areas, while onions or leeks present a near-vertical target that require a very different approach.
Application advice
Agrovista agronomists can advise on all aspects of application technology, in choosing the best nozzles, water volumes and boom heights to hit these various targets more effectively.
Finally, regular assessment of the crop and discussions with buers is essential in order to plant the most likely harvest periods and therefore the use of fungicides that provide for the appropriate harvest interval.