Disease resistance is key factor for Scots growers
While there was little for Scottish arable farmers to get excited about in the latest recommended lists (RL) for cereals and oilseeds released yesterday, improvements in disease resistance could point the way to future benefits for growers north of the Border.
Releasing the annual assessment of varietal performances produced by the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB), Dr Jenna Watts, crop production systems senior scientist with the levy-funded organisation, said that increasingly both growers and buyers were focusing on areas other than outand-out yield.
“From the varieties included in the list and surveys of the industry, it is becoming clear that the cost of fungicides, together with the increasing levels of resistance to our current armoury of chemical control measures is making the disease rating and untreated results a key factor in the choice of new varieties,” said Watts.
Launching the lists for the 2019-20 season she revealed the highest ever rating of 8.1 against Septoria tritici, the most economically important disease of wheat in Scotland. Showing this level of resistance to the disease while returning a treated yield
of 102 per cent of the control in the north region marked the new variety KWS Extase out. But it was its untreated yield of 95 per cent – a full 10 per cent higher than many of its competitors – which Watts said really made the variety stand out.
However as a Nabim Group 2 bread-making variety aimed at the export market, the variety failed to key in to Scotland’s main markets for distilling and animal feeds, focused on soft endosperm varieties.
“However where such leaps are made in one variety there is likely to be more chance that varieties more suitable to Scotland’s main markets will also see their resistance ratings improved – and the fact that breeders are responding to the industry’s call for better resistance is likely to reflect the direction of travel being taken by breeders,” said Watts.
On the malting spring barley front, however there was little to cheer the growers
of Scotland’s main cereal crop, with no new varieties listed suitable for the distilling market which feeds the country’s whisky industry.
And on the disease front, it was also reveald that the ratings for the key late-season leaf disease, Ramularia, had been discontinued entirely – and were unlikely to be reinstated for some years to come.
Catherine Garman, who manages disease research at the AHDB, said that “large and often unpredictable” differences in Ramularia had often been seen across the RL trial sites:
“And varieties in trial also do not appear to perform consistently both within and across UK trials,” said Garman.
She said that while growers might find it disappointing that ratings were no longer given for such a key disease, no information was better than the wrong advice.