Time for integrated pest control fast approaching
While the arable sector might have fallen into the habit of reaching for the spray can to solve every pest and disease problem, crunch time is fast approaching for the adoption of a more integrated approach to controlling these threats.
And cereal farmers were yesterday told that the loss of many commonly used fungicides and other pesticides – due to both legislative changes and the build-up of resistant strains of disease – mean that integrated pest management (IPM) techniques which make greater use of extended crop rotations, varietal resistance and other biological control methods could no longer be viewed as a “passing fad”.
Speaking at the country’s brand new event for the cereal and cropping sector, – Arable Scotland – Professor Fiona Burnett, head of the SRUC’S crop protection unit, said that it was time for farmers to face up to the fact that a new approach was required.
She said: “While the industry undoubtedly needs to speak up for its own interests and defend its corner to protect what is a dwindling armoury of spray products, the reality is that the sector also needs to accept and adjust to a new approach which places less reliance on agrochemicals.”
She added that with chlorothalonil – which is widely used to control key diseases in both wheat and barley – being taken off the market, the move to taking a broader approach could no longer be delayed.
While there might be a steep learning curve ahead for the industry, Burnett said that many high performing businesses were already making good use of IPM – but a change of mindset would be required in many others:
“While in the past chemicals tended to be 95 per cent effective 95 per cent of the time, a move to less reliance on such a broadbrush approach is likely to need more intensive management – with timing and disease predictions and forecasting becoming ever more important,” she continued.
Admitting that there was room for the advisory services to up their game as well – with generic advice sometimes falling short of what the cutting edge growers were looking for – she said that there was plenty of scope for a more targeted approach.
Specialist saleable services offering high quality surveillance and monitoring of pest and disease threats were already on offer – and had been widely adopted by those growing high value crops such as vegetables and potatoes.
Also speaking at the event, Dr Bill Thomas of the Hutton Institute revealed that crop breeding had helped increase “whisky yield per hectare” – a combination of greater grain yield and higher spirit yield per tonne of malt – by 20 per cent to around 5,500 bottles a hectare over the past 40 years.
However, he said that the ongoing £2 million Impromalt project had shown that similar gains could be achieved in a far shorter term by using new targeted breeding techniques which could help combine the quality aspect of spring barley with the yield potential of winter barley.