AD4PT Newsletter September 2020
AD4PT is a new strategic alliance of industry innovators ADAMA, DSV, HORSCH and INTERAGRO, formed to accelerate the identification and development of new technologies that will help UK growers adapt to the crop production challenges of the future.
Each month the AD4PT group will focus on a range of crucial agronomy topics for growers.
AD4PT Autumn Thinking
In our AD4PT Newsletter September 2020 edition we take a look at some of the critical topics for growers this autumn – optimising herbicide performance, launch of new disc drill, keeping beneficials in mind when tackling pests, and more — including TuYV resistance and new high performance Clearfield OSR.
New Taro drill family is highly manoeuvrable and efficient
A new mounted disc drill has been launched by HORSCH to provide a highly manoeuvrable seeding system that is ideal for smaller and irregular fields. The new Taro HD and Taro SL drills have a 6m working width that enables them to cover the ground efficiently and are combined with a front-mounted HORSCH Partner hopper for a compact design.
The Taro 6 HD is equipped with a tyre packer and PowerDisc seed coulters. The packer levels and creates consistent sowing conditions in front of each coulter. The proven PowerDisc seed coulter guarantees optimum depth control, even in heavy conditions with a lot of clods.
For more information click here
The relevance of a.i. characteristics in autumn herbicide selection
The half-life of a crop protection product is a measure of the amount of time it takes for that active ingredient’s parent compound to degrade by 50%.
This publicly available information forms part of the data package required to ensure a herbicide meets the relevant regulatory codes of practice and can vary according to soil type, soil biology and soil chemistry as well as the prevailing climatic conditions (soil temperature and moisture content).
In general terms, higher soil temperatures and the availability of moisture will cause active ingredients to degrade more rapidly (as there will be more energy and water available for biological and chemical processes within the soil profile to take effect). Conversely, a higher organic matter will typically reduce the rate at which a compound degrades: this is particularly true for compounds with a partition coefficient towards organic matter as they will be more tightly bound to the organic matter within the soil and therefore less susceptible to the processes which cause a product to degrade.
Read on here
Power residual herbicides in suboptimal conditions
Optimising herbicide performance will be crucial this autumn to get winter crops off to the best possible start. With increasing grass-weed resistance and suboptimal soil and application conditions threatening herbicide efficacy, improving herbicide performance has never been more important. The addition of adjuvant Backrow will be vital to help mitigate the effects of very wet or very dry conditions that lead to poor weed control and poor crop competition.
Find out more here
Keep beneficials in mind when tackling pests this autumn
With the loss of neonicotinoids forcing growers to change the way they tackle pest control in cereals and oilseed rape, pyrethroid insecticides now form the backbone of many aphid and flea beetle control programmes.
It is worth noting however that not all pyrethroids are equal: tau-fluvalinate for example has a much lower toxicity towards beneficial organisms compared to other pyrethroid-based actives. As such, insecticides like ADAMA’s Mavrik (240 g/litre tau-fluvalinate) enable insects including rove beetles and ground beetles (which can consume up to 125 aphids per day – including pyrethroid resistant myzus aphids) to naturally predate on pests.
Read on here
There’s more to TuYV resistance than you may think
The increased performance of TuYV resistant varieties seen in harvest trials and across UK farms recently might not just be down to their ability to withstand increased viral attack, some OSR specialists now believe.
Whilst evidence of growing numbers of Myzus persicae aphids carrying the virus and reports of higher infection levels in plants is clear, it does not explain the full picture, says Mike Farr of DSV UK Ltd.
“Our own tests in conjunction with NIAB and Warwick University in 2019 showed an average 90% infection level for TuYV across the UK and aphid numbers are definitely rising, but we believe there are other factors at work behind the better performance shown TuYV resistant varieties.
“Many growers who choose to grow the new TuYV resistant variety Temptation, for example, report one of it’s biggest advantages was increased autumn vigour and its ability to grow through flea beetle attack so this could be as important as the viral resistance.”
Find out more here
Clearfield oilseed rape development creating new high performance options
Clearfield oilseed rape continues to reach new heights with the latest varieties pushing yields, gross outputs and agronomic performance to new levels, says DSV’s Sarah Hawthorne.
Many UK growers are starting to see that Clearfield technology adds significant benefits to oilseed rape production over the expected better control of pernicious brassica weeds, she explains.
Building on the success of our triple-layer oilseed rape varieties, DSV quad-layer varieties are now being introduced adding even greater production resilience and reliability for growers.
Find out more here