Last month, we hosted our second expert panel-led webinar following on from the success of our ‘Doing Disease Control Differently’ webinar in January.
This time, the focus was all on sugar beet, weed control and
input costs, and how growers can make sure their sugar beet herbicides work as
effectively as possible in the coming months.
Antonia Walker, UPL’s Technical Specialist for Sugar Beet, kicked
off proceedings by welcoming our special guests for the evening,
including:
●
Jock Willmott from Ceres, who shared his extensive
knowledge in specialist crop management and agronomic benchmarking
●
Pam Chambers, UK technical support manager at British
Sugar, to share her insights and
recommendations on sugar beet herbicide programs and weed control strategies
●
Rob Suckling from De Sangosse, who passed on his
technical expertise on adjuvant use
The costs of weed control in sugar
beet
Our panel began with an in depth discussion and review of
the current input costs for sugar beet crops across the UK, including seed,
fertiliser, fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides.
Jock Willmott walked us through a range of predicted costs
for 2024, with a wealth of data and insight that will be invaluable for any
sugar beet grower.
But as Jock said, “Seed,
fertiliser, sprays - that's not the biggest part of the cost anymore. It's all
about getting it established well and getting that canopy to close
quickly."
He highlighted the potential costs per hectare for
herbicides depending on weed pressure, drawing particular attention to the
difficulty in controlling weeds like blackgrass.
Pam Chambers highlighted the benefits of pre-emergence,
depending on the conditions, before discussion turned to the challenges of
assessing the situation on the ground.
"I would
definitely be looking at a pre-emergence for blackgrass on mineral soils with
ethofumesate and metamitron in the mix. If you think you're not going to get
your first post-emergence on very timely, then it's useful to put a
pre-emergence on," said Pam.
“If you’re not sure about a pre-em application, straight
could be a great choice.”
Tailoring
your herbicide programme
As we dived deeper into trial data that showed good Fat Hen
control with three applications of straight products, our panel explored the
potential of BETTIX FLO (metamitron), EFECKT (ethofumesate),
and BETASANA SC (phenmedipham).
Pam’s detailed overview of a straight programme is a must
watch.
Talk turned to how weed control programmes have evolved with
the loss of products like Max Pro, and how adjuvant use can play an important
role here.
As Rob Suckling said “adjuvant
use becomes more important with the harder control weeds like Fat Hen, which is
where you can see the greatest lift in performance.”
On the subject of adjuvants, our experts highlighted how
methylated seed oils can help improve herbicide performance, rain-fastness and
drift reduction.
“Methylated seed oil
adjuvants can be less phytotoxic than mineral oils while still improving
rain-fastness and penetration,” said Rob.
Mineral oils like Crop Spray 11E, should be used at lower
rates at higher temps to avoid phytotoxicity, whereas methylated seed oils like
Phase 2 are more crop-safe and can be used at higher temps.
Our webinar also included discussion about herbicide and
adjuvant selection depending on temperature, soil condition and much more. To
hear all the details, you’ll need to watch
the full webinar.
We talked about several key products in sugar beet weed
control programmes, including
CENTURION MAX (clethodim) and how it’s best
for blackgrass control when applied early post-emergence.
The key
takeaways
If you didn’t catch our webinar on sugar beet herbicides and
straights programmes, don’t worry. You
can watch it right here.
It’s highly valuable viewing for any sugar beet grower. The
key takeaways for the evening included:
●
How attention to detail like spray timings/intervals
and excellent application are critical for weed control
●
Why using appropriate herbicide modes of action,
resistance management and layering residual control is important
●
That cost-effective programmes require balancing inputs
while maximising yield potential and sugar content
Of course, this is just a very quick summary of the webinar.
For all the insights and opinions, watch
the full discussion here.
