Care required with beet weed control

By Martin Rickatson

07/05/2010

With recent rainfall having helped late-drilled crops to emerge, followign some beet seed having sat in dry conditions for up to three weeks, reports indicate that the majority of fields have now received sufficient moisture to reach seed depth, says the latest report from Broom's Barn Research. Any seeds that fail to germinate within the next 7 to 10 days are unlikely to do so, it suggests.

"Early sown crops are at the six true-leaf stage and establishment is excellent," reports Broom's Barn's Mike May. "Drillings that took place after the last few days in March are more variable.

"Sharp frost has occurred in some areas, but there are no reports of crop damage. Care is required with tank mixes, especially on the late-drilled crops that are only just emerging.

"FAR programmes are working well, with early drilled crops receiving their fourth treatment. Where applications have been on time fields are relatively clean of weeds. The majority of weed control problems are linked to four different scenarios. One is straight phenmediphams in mixtures rather than a combination of desmedipham and phenmedipham, especially where larger weeds are the target. Another is spray programmes that began too late - this is occurring in later-drilled crops where weed emergence is variable. In some cases, intervals between spray applications have been too wide, and dry conditions have made weeds more difficult to control."

Blackgrass germination has been prolific in known problem fields, with continued emergence over the last few weeks, notes Mr May.