Friday, March 29, 2024

New player cropping up

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Remember Baytan? It was a seed treatment that divided wheat growers. A minority would swear by the early-season foliar disease protection the triadimenol treatment provided while others wouldn’t touch it for fear of delayed emergence and-or its premium price. Bayer, Baytan’s creator, is still in the systemic seed treatment market today with Galmano (167g/tonne of fluquinconazole) but there’s a new player in the paddock gradually gaining ground – BASF.
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Two years ago it launched Systiva, the first SDHI-based cereal seed treatment and Kinto Duo, a more traditional mix of the triazoles triticonazole and prochloraz.

The triticonazole component of Kinto Duo offers some systemic activity, notably on net blotch and fusarium but BASF’s Grant Hagerty said that at a loading of 50g/t it is limited to the one-to-three leaf stage of the crop, autumn- or spring-sown.

Meanwhile, the prochloraz at 120g/t covers the usual seed-borne suspects, loose smut and bunt so there’s no need for a base seed treatment as there is with Galmano.

Systiva similarly covers both seed-borne and foliar diseases but it is altogether a much more powerful systemic delivering 333g of fluxapyroxad per tonne of seed. Unlike its triazole predecessors and competitors there’s no sign of delayed emergence from seed treated with it.

“Quite the opposite, in fact it’s likely to enhance emergence,” Hagerty said.

“Its role in autumn sowings is undoubted and in spring crops, though you’re less likely to see an outright difference in tonnes per hectare of yield, it does mean you start with a very clean crop.”

In autumn-sown barley typical yield response ranges from 0.25t/ha to one tonne/ha compared to crops treated with a standard non-systemic seed treatment but otherwise receiving the same fungicide programme, Hagerty said.

“A tonne per hectare response isn’t very common but every trial we’re getting 250kg/ha.”

That’s coming from keeping the crop clean through winter so spring fungicides are more protective and less curative.

“It ring-fences the field. You don’t have to spray for rhyncho at all. If it’s a first crop of barley you probably won’t see any for the whole growing season and even in a second-year crop you can easily get to first node without a spray. 

“After that it will depend on the rhyncho pressure but under normal conditions you’d still not need to spray for rhyncho for the whole season.”

The fungicide also protects seedlings from net blotch, mildew and rusts but it does come at a premium price.

“We don’t set the retail pricing but it should come out at about $100/ha in autumn-sown crops.”

How growers set about getting a return on that tends to fall into two camps, Hagerty said.

“Systiva’s able to maintain a crop on track for its theoretical maximum yield until at least August. From then on there are two paths you can take – minimum cost, using the start Systiva’s given you to save on sprays, or a full-spray programme to maximise your chance of capturing that yield potential come harvest.”

Systiva is registered for use in wheat but responses weren’t so convincing in that crop and, to allow growers using two foliar SDHI fungicides to comply with Fungicide Resistance Action Committee guidelines, BASF’s not promoting its use in that crop.

Probably because of that and pricing Systiva’s gaining traction only slowly in the market but long-term Hagerty said he’d like to think it will become as integral to barley programmes as Moddus (trinexapac-ethyl) has become to ryegrass seed production.

Taking advantage

The Foundation for Arable Research’s Cereal Disease Management guide last spring stated in irrigated and dryland trials at Chertsey, Mid Canterbury, and dryland at St Andrews, South Canterbury, that Systiva provided an economic advantage in irrigated autumn-sown barley but not dryland, assuming a foliar fungicide programme followed. 

Initial data suggested foliar fungicide programmes should be maintained following the use of Systiva, the guide said. Go to www.far.org.nz for more information.

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