Winter wheat
The field of KWS Lili was drilled after oilseed rape and the whole trial received a standard T0.
At T1 the field standard and the BASF standard had 0.75 l/ha Revystar® XE and the Agronomy Max had 1.0 l/ha Revystar® XE. At T2 the Agronomy Max again received the highest rate of Revystar® XE at 1.5 l/ha, with lower rates of 1.0 l/ha for the BASF standard and 0.8 l/ha of very similar actives for the field standard. T3 saw additional pyraclostrobin applied to the Agronomy Max, on top of the trial standard Kestrel® (prothioconazole+ tebuconazole) treatment.
The Agronomy Max tramline yielded 13.29 t/ha yield compared with 12.51 t/ha for his field standard programme and 12.79 t/ha for the standard BASF programme.
The size of the Agronomy Max yield benefit, supported by a visible NDVI benefit as the crop senesced in late July, gives confidence that this was a ‘real’ treatment difference. The Agronomy Max treatment also had higher thousand grain weight and specific weight than the other two treatments.
Scott said, “The Agronomy Max programme cost an extra £52/ha in fungicide but taking 0.78 t/ha extra yield and my average selling price of £190/t that was worth an additional £96.20/ha in margin after taking off the fungicide costs.”
He said, “T2 is the most important spray that we do on the farm- we’ve invested right the way through until flag leaf and we need to keep that investment going so we want something robust, that’s going to last keep the crop clean and green right through to the head spray. We have experience of Revystar® XE (mefentrifluconazole + fluxapyroxad) on our farm at T2 and it did just that, resulting in higher yield and higher bushel weight. Revystar® XE is the cornerstone of a successful T2 for us, with the protection to keep everything clean until T3.”
Spring Barley
In the Real Results LG Diablo spring barley trial, the field treatment consisted of Propel® Xpro (bixafen + prothioconazole + spiroxamine) followed by Imtrex® (fluxapyroxad) + Phoenix® (folpet) at T2.
This was compared with the BASF programme of Priaxor® EC (fluxapyroxad + pyraclostrobin) + Decoy® 250 EC (prothioconazole) at T1 followed by Revystar® XE + Phoenix®. Both programmes had Decoy® 250 EC as a common T3.
The yield results showed the BASF programme yielded over 0.4 t/ha more than the field treatment, with significant treatment effects on green leaf area (GLA) on leaf layers 1 and 2. Because of a lack of replication, ADAS analysis of the results were not able to confirm whether the difference was due to the treatments or underlying variation.
The results have, however, encouraged Scott to use a bit more Revysol® this season. He said, “We might not have got those results over the whole farm, but we will look to use Revysol® and push yields especially on the good bits of land.”