Best solutions for crops
Task group will support clients’ sustainability
A LOT has been said about resistance management, with a plethora of research activity taking place behind the scenes of large R and D companies, and by researchers, agronomists, private consultants and collaborators to find answers and prevent productivity and economic losses in our grains industry.
Elders has taken a collaborative approach to resistance management issues and recently the National Elders Technical Services team met to formulate a geographical support strategy for the recognised threat of herbicide, insecticide and fungicide resistance.
Underpinning this strategy is the newly formed Elders National Agronomy Task Group, which will concentrate on a range of activities to support sustainability for clients and industry.
In the Elders northern zone, our key agronomy task group will work within the horticulture and broadacre cropping groups to provide solutions and best management practice advice with a focus on supporting R and D extension activity and outcomes.
As we near the winter crop halfway mark, the Broadacre team is very conscious of the threat of fungicide resistance, which has increased due to the lack of highly resistant varieties and a strong reliance on chemistry for the control of many fungal diseases.
This is especially important given the large increase of pulses and legumes now added to the rotation, their disease spectrum challenges, and the issue of limited fungicide modes of action.
The last point presents a significant threat to fungicide resistance because when a
❝ Broadacre (is) very conscious of the threat of fungicide resistance.
— Maree Crawford
fungal disease develops resistance to one fungicide then all other fungicides with the same mode of action or within the same fungicide group, are also put at risk.
The increase in reliance on fungicides to control Ascochyta blight in chickpea crops is a significant challenge as last season we experienced growers applying
up to seven applications of fungicides to their crop to protect yield and gain disease control.
With the Group 3 fungicides (DMI) making up a large proportion of crop protection in broad-acre cropping systems and researchers finding increased levels of resistance across a range of crops to this chemistry, our
northern agronomists will be seeking solutions particularly for our cereal growing clients through adoption of programs which combine existing and new chemistry and practices options.
This winter our team of agronomists, together with R and D partners, are involved in activities to ground truth the effect of new chemistry,
especially new group 7 SDHI (succinate dehydrogenase inhibitor) co-formulations.
They will look at programs for chickpea, focusing on different application timings/methods to understand protection longevity of these new products under differing agronomic, nutrition and environmental circumstances.