“Maximising crop yield for your customers by applying a robust fungicide programme is always a good investment, but with the high prices currently available for wheat and barley, it is even more important this year,” says Neil Waddingham, Bayer’s customer marketing manager for arable crops.
 

“Each season, Bayer invests considerable resources to undertake a large number of fungicide trials throughout New Zealand to monitor the performance of our fungicide range.
 

“Our targets are the ’Big 6’ yield-hungry arable diseases of wheat, barley and ryegrass seed crops – speckled leaf blotch, leaf

rust and stripe rust in wheat, scald and Ramularia leaf spot in barley and stem rust in ryegrass seed crops. And each year we learn more about fungicide performance in NZ.”

 

In both wheat and barley, fungicides were highly profitable in 2017, Waddingham says.
 

Large profits from effective disease control in wheat were conclusively demonstrated in last season’s research and this was no surprise.
 

“Last year we observed aggressive infections of stripe rust, leaf rust and speckled leaf blotch with each disease dominating a single trial,” explains Roy Stieller, senior development manager for Bayer.
 

“This allowed us to see the profit from controlling each disease. What we found was that for all diseases, the profit achieved was impressive. Controlling speckled leaf blotch gave a profit of $615 per ha; leaf rust $1315 per ha and stripe rust $1390 per ha.”
 

In all case, the fungicide programme used was a DMI fungicide at GS32 (T1), and then an application of Aviator Xpro at both

GS39 and GS65 (T2 and T3).
 

(To calculate the profit achieved, a wheat price of $400 per tonne and average on-farm fungicide prices were used.)
 

It was a very similar story for barley but in this case the trials illustrated the profitability of applying increasing robust programmes, rather than the response of a particular disease.
 

While the standard GS32 (T1) and GS39 (T2) fungicide programme was very profitable, using additional fungicides at GS30 and GS60 increased the profit achieved considerably, with a four spray fungicide programme utilising Delaro and Aviator Xpro giving a profit of $683 per ha.
 

What is the best way of achieving these impressive returns?
 

“The most important factor is fungicide timing. For both wheat and barley, once you apply your first fungicide, maintain a spray interval of 25-28 days for the rest of your fungicide programme,” Waddingham says.

 

For wheat, the most important application is GS39, flag leaf emergence, and this is when Aviator Xpro should be applied.
 

This year, as crops are at significant threat from speckled leaf blotch, Bayer recommends also applying Aviator Xpro at GS32.

This programme can then be finished with Prosaro plus a strobilurin fungicide at GS65.
 

For barley, Bayer recommends applying Delaro at both GS30 and GS32 followed by Aviator Xpro at flag leaf emergence. This ensures the lower leaves, responsible for much of a barley crops' yield, are fully protected and that the impact of Ramularia leaf spot after ear emergence is minimised.
 

For more information about arable diseases and available control options visit www.arablefungicides. co.nz.