News article

The views of farmers and agronomists have been central to the development of NIAB TAG’s new membership scheme, launched at Cereals 2010.

NIAB TAG Network combines NIAB’s expertise in varieties and seeds with the comprehensive combinable crop management and agronomy information delivered by TAG, into a single set of new, innovative and dynamic membership packages.

NIAB TAG Network replaces the NIAB Association and TAG Direct brands from October 2010.

Our summary table returns to the website to show Members where and how many blossom midges are caught in pheromone traps at a large network of NIAB TAG sites. Current TAG Members can access further information.

NIAB TAG will be out in force at Cereals 2010, on June 9th and 10th at Royston.

NIAB Tag will be unveiling its plans for the future at Cereals 2010. All visitors to the event are welcome to call in and see us, at the first Cereals event since the merger between NIAB and TAG.

Temperatures in the high twenties have encouraged crop and weed growth after a long cool spring. Flag leaves are out in most winter wheat crops, with reports from the south of boots splitting and wheat orange blossom midge taking advantage. Many oilseed rape crops are setting pods as the flowering phase passes. Lack of rain is the new problem, however, with many crops still waiting to take up significant amounts of applied fertilisers.

Late frosts, which normally rape crops can recover from, appear to have had a more severe effect this year. Crop effects are variable but there have been many reports of flower buds being completely killed and pod set drastically reduced. TAG is surveying such crops in an effort to determine any causal trends.

For several years now TAG has found that average daily air temperature is a reliable guide to timing of sclerotinia infection and hence of fungicide treatment. Oilseed rape is now coming into full flower and graphs showing the rolling average air temperatures at a number of sites around the UK are available in Members’ Technical Information, in ‘TAG Updates’.

As rape fields slowly turn from green to yellow, monitoring of average daily air temperatures suggests conditions are almost right for spore release from sclerotia of sclerotinia in the soil. The flowering fungicide discussion is all set to start up again in TAG Updates.

Five new varieties have been added to the BBRO/NIAB Recommended List of Sugar Beet Varieties for 2011. All new additions have rhizomania tolerance, with two also having tolerance to beet cyst nematode (BCN).

From KWS comes Rosalinda KWS with a very high yield potential and Annouschka KWS which incorporates BCN tolerance. Valeska, from Nickerson Sugar Beet Seed Ltd, also shows a very high yield potential. Elsoms’ SESVANDEHAVE-bred Cheetah couples high yields with relatively high sugar content levels.

Two years of trials with Syngenta’s new SDHI fungicide Bontima feature in our latest New product Guide, along with detailed product information and TAG’s view on if and where it should be used.

After a long wait for soil temperatures to reach a level where weed control can resume, they show no signs yet of reaching double figures and crop and weed growth is still slow. Some areas reached 8-9^oC before Easter but in some parts they have slipped back to 6^oC.