In this series of three videos, Mike Abram, PR and social media manager at Bayer and Andrew Williamson, discuss how Andrew has been managing oilseed rape at his farm in Shropshire this season.
In the first video they discuss how to approach flowering sprays in oilseed rape.
To find out more about Andrew Williamson’s experiences with oilseed rape as well as his Judge For Yourself Aviator trial, click here to view the other two videos in the series.
In the spring Andrew what’s your typical approach to flowering sprays in oilseed rape?
So normally we’d go for a single spray strategy for our flowering sprays and aim for a one application at mid flowering.
What would the targets be for that?
We’re obviously going to target Sclerotinia. Sclerotinia is one of the diseases we have to deal with so we’re looking at light leaf spot as well and historically we’ve had breakdowns of Sclerotinia but not recently.
How do you decide on when you’re going to target Sclerotinia? Have you got tools that you can use to help you?
I think there are tools, because it’s very much weather dependant on whether you’re going to get the impact by Sclerotinia. So, we can use it where the models and the rain fall data and that sort of thing to understand when we might get aspects of that disease coming into the crop.
And do you think they work? Do they help? Are they useful to you?
I think so, definitely in this day and age, we’ve got to use all the tools we have available and we’ve got to use cultural controls as well as chemical control.
