Arable Farming

With potato crops making up for a slow start to the season, Farmers Guardian catches up with agronomists in the East and the South West for the latest agronomy advice.

Stewardship guidelines aimed at protecting workers hand-pulling bolters and weed beet from sugar beet crops were introduced by Bayer in 2018 with the intention of promoting product stewardship and operator safety.

Hutton Criteria disease warnings have been declared in key potato-growing areas.

Italian ryegrass is arguably more difficult to control than black-grass, being less responsive to cultural controls, but a new herbicide is helping to get on top of the weed.

When describing integrated pest management (IPM) techniques, recording when you do not take action, such as not applying a chemical, could be just as important as noting when you do.

In conjunction with Bayer we will be keeping track of winter wheat development over two cultivation strategies, and using Rapid Disease Detection results to monitor disease progress through the season.

A new independent trial carried out by the National Association of Agricultural Contractors (NAAC) has shown that larger seed sizes of typical UK varieties of winter wheat and spring barley resulted in higher emergence rates.

Practical glyphosate application guidelines, published by the Weed Resistance Action Group (WRAG), aims to help arable growers reduce the increasing risk of glyphosate resistance developing in grass-weeds.

The result of the temptation to drill earlierlastautumn to ensure crops were safely in the ground is evident insome fields as highnumbers of black-grass headsemerge above the crop.

Farmers are being asked to assist in a new study looking at the spread of rat’s tail fescue, a grass-weed that is already posing problems in France, Switzerland, Spain and Denmark - and is now starting to take hold in England