Article taken from Arable Farming, September 2017.
Despite the earliest start to harvest most can remember, it has been a frustrating one across the region, with combines having to take every opportunity they can among the heavy showers and gale-force winds.
The summer weather really let us down and the cool, bright days we hoped for were replaced by either dull, wet and windy days or a heatwave. On the back of this, yields, as predicted, have been a mixed bag. While thicker crops of barley produced lots of grain, they almost appear to have had too much potential for the poor summer and, as a rule, the specific weights have not been great. What looked to be big yields from trailer loads turned out to be a little disappointing when put over a weighbridge. Therefore, I am taking some of the 'pub talk' yields with a big pinch of salt this year unless they have been verified over a weighbridge.
Rape has certainly been more encouraging, and where the crop has remained standing and not suffered too badly from the elements, yields have often been above the four tonnes/ hectare mark, and in some fields significantly more. A little like barley, however, it appears seeds have not filled quite as well as they could have with the lack of solar radiation across the North East. Talking to cine grower who grows a similar acreage of OSR each the first time ever, he had so much bulk he could not fit all the rape into the shed. However, when all tallied up over a weighbridge, he had less weight than last year.
This suggests we got everything right for maximising seed number, but fell short of achieving the really big yields by not filling the seeds to their potential.
I did, however, witness the combining of a field of OSR grown as part of the OSR Yield Enhancement Network project, and this was verified at 6.21t/ha. There were only 10 plants/sq.m at harvest and each plant had yield-forming branches right from the bottom. This really backs up the work Agrovista has been looking at for several years showing low, evenly-established plant populations consistently give us the best yields.
To pinch a quote from the farmer concerned: ""I like to grow rape bushes, not plants:' While all the rape on the farm yielded well, the field grown for the project was significantly higher than neighbouring fields, with the same plant population, and the only difference was regular applications of amino acids throughout the season using the product Terra-sorb in addition to an application of the seaweed-based product Maxicrop Triple at green bud stage. For many years now I have seen the benefits of these 'bioscience' products in oilseed rape, and think they are an essential part of the programme if we are going to move rape yields to the next level.
Wheat harvest
At the time of writing, wheat harvest is only just getting underway in the region, and indications point to a mixed bag when it comes to yield with a correlation of better yields associated with better land. There does, as expected, appear to be a big penalty in the areas which lodged, particularly those that lodged during the storms in June, and the quality in these areas is notably poor.
While across the board, on the back of the disappointing summer, yields have not hit the records we were all hoping for earlier in the season, they look like being a decent average. When combined with good prices, things could be a lot worse.
The early harvest and plenty of moisture should give us an ideal opportunity for cultural weed control in the form of stale seedbeds as well as good crop establishment, and good performance from residual chemistry, so I am approaching the new season with a degree of optimism.
Agronomy Facts
Chris Martin is a technical manager for Agrovista, based in the north east of England. His role is to provide technical advice to growers over an area extending from Lincolnshire to Scotland. Prior to this, lie was an agronomist with the company for 15 years and continues to provide agronomy advice to a number of growers producing combinable crops in the Scotch Corner area.