27 April 2023

Crops advice: Management tips for spring and winter barley and winter wheat

This week, Teagasc Tillage Specialist Ciaran Collins provides an update on spring barley, winter wheat and winter barley, including planting progress and fungicide treatments.

Spring barley

Plenty of spring barley remains to be sown in this stop-start spring. However, there are large variations around the country in terms of percentage sown. Traditional malting barley areas like east Cork and north Wexford have up to 95% of spring barley planted; this reduces to 50% sown in areas with heavier soil, which is not getting the chance to dry out sufficiently in this broken weather.

While some farmers are still waiting for a chance to sow, others who had an opportunity in early March are dealing with a different set of issues. In general, these early-sown crops established well – apart from wet patches in fields – but disease and trace element deficiencies have become apparent in the last week. 

Magnesium deficiency has become evident in some of these crops as they struggle with cooler weather in the last week. While some of these deficiencies may be transient in nature due to current weather conditions, it is better to treat with a foliar product where symptoms exist.  

For some growers this trace element will coincide with a fungicide application. There has been a few reports of disease in some of these early-sown crops in the last week, particularly net blotch in Planet. This is not surprising given that Planet has a resistance rating of 4 for net blotch and early sowing in continuous barley slots will exacerbate the problem. Where net blotch is present in these early-sown crops, treat with fungicides with good activity on net blotch like Proline/Comet.

Winter wheat

Winter wheat growers will be busy over the next few days applying the leaf three fungicide. An analysis of winter wheat crops from across the country in the last few days indicates that leaf three will be fully emerged in a large proportion of crops sown that were sown in the first two weeks of October. It is of critical importance for the efficacy of the fungicide that leaf three is fully emerged and it’s better to be slightly late rather than too early. Septoria levels are variable. Most crops have significant levels of septoria on leaf five but some ‘dirtier’ crops in the south have low levels of septoria on leaf four.

Winter barley

There are large variations in growth stages in winter barley. Some later crops are at GS 32, while some early-sown KWS Joyau has awns emerging. If growth regulator is required, it needs to be applied before awn emergence and ideally at flag leaf for greatest benefit.

Disease levels are low, but Ramularia is the risk from now on. Teagasc trials indicate that the best control of Ramularia comes from a fungicide application between boots swollen and awn emergence at the latest. Poor control is experienced when application is delayed until heading. We are limited in the level of control we can achieve, but products like Folpet, Revystar and Proline will delay the onset of Ramularia if applied at the correct timing.

Listen: Critical crop agronomy for late April and early May