Arable Farming

With the weather having being kinder to us since the turn of the year, significant progress has been made on two fronts.

With the backdrop of resistance issues and withdrawal of chlorothalonil (CTL), growers attending the AHDB/SRUC Agronomy 2020 meeting in Inverurie heard how to maximise disease control this season. Jo Learmonth reports.

Essex farmer and advocate of no-till farming Simon Cowell hopes that the new decade will bring Government support for growers to pursue sustainable farming practices more widely.

New wheat fungicide Inatreq Active (fenpicoxamid), developed by Corteva will not be launched in time for this season but the company remains confident it will be in the market in 2021.

With approximately two-thirds of the sugar beet harvest complete, some sugar factories are set to stay open for longer due to wet soil conditions delaying harvesting in some areas.

Progress with winter wheat drilling remains slow, with rain last week hindering field operations and agronomists urging caution despite a few days of drier, frosty weather.

The potato industry is facing many challenges in terms of import and retail competition, growing the crop and recruiting skilled labour.

Syngenta’s first hybrid wheat variety could be available to French growers as soon as 2022, as part of the company’s ‘sustainable future for wheat’ plan.

Using RNA interference (RNAi), a biological process which disrupts the production of an organism’s proteins, Syngenta is looking at a biocontrol method which kills target species but has no impact on any other organism.

Essex farmer and advocate of no-till farming Simon Cowell hopes that the new decade will bring Government support for growers to pursue sustainable farming practices more widely.