Barclay Crop Protection

Growers’ most important tool too often overlooked

Stale seedbeds are one of the grower's most important tools for dealing with problem weeds, say Barclay Crop Protection.

According to Paul Haynes, UK technical manager, both pre-em and post-em herbicide applications are likely to be severely compromised if growers do not deal ruthlessly with problem weeds like black-grass at every out of crop opportunity.

"Don't rely on cultivation alone to deal with the problem," he warns growers, "this can often lead to buried weeds which re-emerge in the crop when they are too big for residual products to control and it's too late for glyphosate. If you are looking for close to 100% control you really have to kill as much black-grass as possible before you even think about getting the crop sown."

Cultivations can often loosen germinated or chitted seedlings, says Mr Haynes. "Although the soil moisture levels in many parts of the UK have been quite low this year, there's always the risk that they'll survive the disturbance. And if they're beyond the one-leaf stage, then pre-em black-grass products will see their control drop off.

"If pre-em treatments end up being delayed, because people are worried about soil moisture, then there's every chance these transplanted black-grass seedlings could be too big for post-em treatments to have maximum effect."

Whilst most autumn crops will now be in and established and awaiting follow up treatments like Atlantis, some growers will still have either winter beans or spring crops to come. "Resistance management should always be the main objective, thus we advise every opportunity to tackle problem weeds out of crop in stale seedbeds or over wintered stubbles with glyphosate products such as Gallup".

Planned strategies such as this will deliver a much better level of control and improve your resistance management strategy several-fold.

"Cultivations alone won't deal with black-grass satisfactorily - cultural control methods have a major part to play in modern IPM systems but with our somewhat unpredictable weather patterns we need to include an element of chemical control, in the form of a total herbicide such as Gallup," he emphasises.

"In common with many other agronomists, I believe too many growers still underestimate their black-grass populations and overestimate the ability of products to control them.

"If you've a black-grass problem - and that means anyone who's got black-grass on their farm - then you should always be treating it as difficult because if it isn't now it will be! Therefore we should always be factoring in at least one glyphosate application, if not two."