Brassica growers and agronomists can now more accurately match disease and pest control programs with particular threats thanks to the Brassica Alert monitoring and forecasting support tool.
Designed and managed by the Allium & Brassica Centre and sponsored by Syngenta, Brassica Alert employs enhanced pheromone trapping and observing of early pest presence, disease spore trapping and weather modeling to offer real-time risk assessments, shared a release from Syngenta.
“Early season reports had seen a low initial risk of ringspot in dry conditions, but high-risk warning for white blister, which requires only limited leaf wetness to develop. Silver Y moth had been identified at red warning high-risk populations on 90% of monitoring sites across the eastern counties, however thrip and diamond back moth were at low numbers,” explained the release.
“Brassica Alert has allowed growers the flexibility of going from what was an industry-standard fixed spray interval disease control program, to targeted applications choosing products most suitable at the time of application,” said Carl Sharp from the Allium & Brassica Centre. “In our independent trials, two targeted fungicide applications indicated by Brassica Alert, gave comparative disease control, marketable yield and quality as using the standard four to five spray program.
Brassica Alert highlights the potential for forecasting tools to evolve target treatments and strengthen decision making, believes Ed Flint, Syngenta digital agronomy specialist.
“The greatest benefit comes when you start to couple decision support tools together,” said Flint. “Growers who use Brassica Alert in combination with Syngenta Spray Assist, for example, can identify appropriate spray window opportunities for application timing ahead of pest or disease outbreaks, along with advice on the optimum application technique for the intended target, to get the best results possible.”
Brassica Alert is agreeable with preventative fungicide programs such as Amistar Top and Plover, as well as pest control programs like Hallmark Zeon and Minecto One.
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