APHIDS in late-sown crops are the next obstacle to the region’s growers getting a good yield, as rain continues to fall late in the winter cropping season.
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Tamworth Rural agronomist Greg Worland, who covers the Tamworth area out to Somerton, said he was still very optimistic about the prospects of wheat, barley and canola, especially early-sown.
“The early-sown crops are up and obviously we’ve had enough rain now that they’ll make a really good crop - they look really, really good,” he said.
“Later-sown crops still look good, but … they have struggled with waterlogging and were just recovering from it now, and too much rain has been affecting nutrient uptake.”
Mr Worland said the other challenge in the late-sown crops was pests.
“Now that we’re warming up, the effect of insects is going to be greater on those as well,” he said.
“Aphids are just starting to get about now in all crops [and] it’s so wet we can’t really do much about it. If it was dry now, we’d be able to get in and do a bit of a preventative spray or knockdown to keep numbers low; we’re now at risk of those numbers getting out of hand.”
Mr Worland said the issue was not the safety or effectiveness of the chemicals, but the fact there were “paddocks you literally can’t walk across”.
Really late-sown crops haven’t had post-emergent weed control applied, and Mr Worland said that, with more rain, “it’s just going to get too late for those and weeds will start to take over”.
However, he said that apart from them being very wet, “overall crop health is quite good at the moment”.
“I haven’t seen any lodging of crop - they haven’t fallen over - but we’re just getting to that stage now where we’re obviously going to have a higher risk of crop lodging.”
Ideally, he said, the remainder of the winter season would have warm and dry weather before harvest in mid-November to early December. This would also allow growers to get fields in order for the summer cropping season – around Tamworth, that includes sorghum and mung beans.
So is the winter cropping season still salvageable?
“Absolutely. The season still looks great.”