In 2020, the Rougham site will be trialling winter wheat and winter barley, looking at BYDV, seed rates, row width and lots more.

Update - 26th May 2020

All in all a busy, hot and dry week at Rougham Innovation Centre, T2 fungicides applied to wheat and signs of disease appearing in untreated plots – but still no rain on the forecast!!!

Winter Wheat T2 fungicides were applied 20^th & 21^st May. Like at the T1 application there were some variations between variety growth stage – although all were comfortably at BBCH 39 (flag leaf fully emerged) at the time of application. Low rainfall in May and no rain on the forecast for the coming week has meant that Septoria pressure is still low. Yellow Rust is appearing in the susceptible varieties, with those plots that didn’t receive a robust T1 also starting to show symptoms. A variety of approaches are being tried in the Adaptive Disease Management trial, looking at tailoring fungicide applications to balance disease pressure, variety resistance and in season conditions.

Winter Barley is growing well, with very little disease. We are seeing a good plant height response from the Winter Barley PGR work, which looks at the building blocks of a PGR programme and the benefits at each application timing. Trial plots looking at Hyvido Winter Barley for biogas production are approaching the growth stage for the first cut, we will be comparing gas yields with Hybrid Rye. Loose Smut symptoms are appearing in the seedcare trials, which aim to test a ‘worst case scenario’ for seed treatments by using an infected seedlot.

Spring Barley plots all received some much needed nitrogen and are growing very well. The spring drilled winter wheat is looking rather behind the spring wheat plots, with mildew and yellow rust appearing at high levels and the plants looking like they may not vernalize. Pea and bean weevil have continued to nibble the Spring Beans, but the plants are growing away from the earlier damage meaning the real concern will be the larvae eating the root nodules and denying us the nitrogen fixing benefit into next season.