Cereal Disease Control Solutions

Wheat Fungicide Facts

Click on the links below to find out more about the wheat timings and growth stages:

T0 Cleans-up the crop in specific situaltions to reduce pressure on the rest of the programme and provide more flexibility of T1 sprays
T1 Essential. Sets the crop up and maintains potential yield
T2 Essential. Keep the main yield-producing leaves free of disease
T3 Prevent the crop from late yield robbers and maintains grain quality

On average, T2 is the most important, followed by T1, then T3. In addition, T0 is a very sound extra investment at little cost in high early-risk situations.

T2 Wheat Timing / Growth Stage

T2 Essential. Keep the main yield-producing leaves free of disease

The T2 fungicide treatment is the most important for yield protection, because it is keeping the flag leaf clean. The flag leaf is responsible for intercepting 45% of the total light energy used by the wheat plant.

Ideally, wait for the flag leaf to fully emerge to get full value from fungicides. However, on farms with large hectarages to be treated it may be worth starting at the point of flag leaf emergence to ensure all crops are sprayed within the optimum timing. It is better to start 2 days early than finish 2 days late.

In general, advice is to spray early - at GS 37 - on early drilled wheats, which are given an early T2, to bridge the gap between treatments safely.

This also allows knock-back activity on leaf 2 and leaf 3, further down the canopy.

For crops drilled at conventional dates, GS 39, full flag leaf emergence, is the recommended timing.