Virtual show reflects key role of arable cropping
Despite the cancellation of the physical event, the biggest arable cropping show and demonstration day this side of the Border – Arable Scotland – goes ahead today in virtual format.
And with climate change concerns and cuts to the armoury of pesticides teaming up with postbrexit changes to farm policy and market access all meaning Scotland’s arable sector faces it biggest set of challenges ever in coming years, the organisers claimed the programme of events is this year more important than ever.
Thesruc’sprofessorfiona Burnett said that Scottish farmers were keen to face up to “the reality of the here and now” and that the uncertainties of the current situation had prompted a huge demand from the industry for background information on new techniques and approaches.
“And while farmers might not readily use terms such as integrated pest management which takes a much wider view of ways in which to protect crops from pest and diseases, all the signs are that they are keen to maximise the benefits of crop varietal resistance, biological control methods and extended crop rotations,” she said.
She added that a recent survey conducted by the college had highlighted a real thirst for knowledge on how to take up many of the approaches which would play a central role in securing a more sustainable future for the cropping sector.
And with a greater use of legumes such as peas and beans likely to play a key role in reaching this goal, Dr Ali Karley, research leader at the James Hutton Institute, said that there was a growing interest not only in improving varieties and management practices for existing legume crops such as peas and beans to better suit the Scottish climate, but also in research into crops which had never been grown in Scotland before, such as lentils and soya.
She said that with only 10 per cent of Scotland’s land area devoted to growing crops, there had been a heavy reliance on standard cereals and oilseed rape, which not only meant that there was a lack of diversity in the cropping patterns but the resulting monocultures also limited biodiversity levels.
Admitting that both peas and beans could give highly variable yields across years, she said that better breeding programmes could help identify varieties and management practices which were better suited to Scotland’s shorter summers.
The difference in varietal performance under different growing regimes was also highlighted as a key area of research by fellow Hutton scientist, Professor Adrian Newton.
With new reduced tillage practices likely to be encouragedandadoptedto help reduce carbon emissions and improve soil quality, he said that there had been little research carried out into how these practices influenced varietal performance.
However, he said that recent work investigating the effect of different tillage methods had shown that despite lagging the current pack leader when ploughing was adopted, the spring barley variety Sassy had consistently topped the list in field trials where minimum inversion techniques were used:
“So there is a lot of information yet to be teased out of this area,” said Newton. ●Full details of the day’s programme are available on the Arable Scotland website.