Crops and Soils Bulletin June 2023: Assessing Mycotoxin Risks

All wheat entering the food chain must have a risk assessment for mycotoxins completed and the mycotoxin risk assessment can be found on the AHDB website at this link https://ahdb.org.uk/mycotoxins 

The risk of mycotoxins is strongly driven by rainfall over the flowering and ripening growth stages in wheat, and a fungicide applied in a well-timed manner can reduce the risk.  The efficacy of fungicides against ear blight drops dramatically a few days before or after an infection event so an optimum timing is to apply the ear spray in the 24-48 hours around a splash event which carries the fusarium onto the flowering ear.  Once the crop gets in to ripening (post flowering) the yield benefits from a T3 diminish significantly.  The ear spray options are based around azoles fungicides and pay particular attention to final application dates and harvest interval restrictions for ear sprays.