The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Cereals
Careful choice of varieties can save growers money
Careful choice of cereal varieties can offer growers a real opportunity to save money, believes Professor Fiona Burnett of SRUC.
Using demonstration plots at Cereals in Practice, hosted at Saphock, Oldmeldrum, to make the point, she said: “We have been promoting integrated pest management for years but now we are beginning to see tangible examples of it working.
“Breeders have not been rewarded in the past for producing varieties with good disease resistance but that is changing rapidly.”
As an example, Prof Burnett used a plot of the winter wheat variety Cordiale, which has a septoria triticale score of 4.8, showing quite poor resistance to the yield-robbing fungus.
The plot had been given a four-spray programme, not untypical of that used in commercial practice, at a cost of around £140 per hectare.
The results were mediocre with the disease controlled but still obvious.
An adjacent plot had been sown with Siskin, also a bread-making variety, but with a septoria resistance score of 6.8.
This plot had not been sprayed at all but was completely free of disease.
Prof Burnett said: “The point we are making here is that there are real savings to be made.
“We selected these varieties to show how what seems a relatively small difference in septoria score – 4.8 against 6.8 on a scale of zero to nine – can make a big difference.”
Disease pressure, particularly in Aberdeenshire, she pointed out had been low in April due to the dry weather but there had been plenty of the rain splash which spreads septoria in May and June.
Dr Steve Hoad, also of SRUC, had welcoming words for Laureate, the new spring malting barley.
“The yield advantage over current industry standard Concerto is 12% which is astonishing,” he said. “It has overtaken three other new varieties in the malting approval process and there seems to be big tonnage of seed available for next year.” There was a caution, however. “It could move quickly to take 70% or even 80% of the market making it as dominant as Concerto has been in recent years,” said Dr Hoad.
“But there is no obvious successor so it might pay to look at the potential of Sienna, Octavia and KWS Sassy, the three varieties which have been overtaken in the approval process.”