Spring Barley Update – August 2020

The monitored commercial crop data for the adopted crops this week is shown in the table below.

This data is generated in commercial crops in your area so is indicative of the disease pressure and growth stages on farms at the moment. It should give you a guide to the generic disease pressure in your area.

There seem to be quite a few cases of blind and empty ears of spring barley in crops which relate to the early stressful weather conditions in the spring/summer and the wet weather over flowering.

Back when the ears were forming at late tillering/early stem extension there were probably checks in growth which have caused sterility. There were some warm days and late frosts to stop and start growth, and of course dry conditions then were stressful too. Ordinarily male sterility isn’t a problem if the weather is fine during flowering and the flowers are open and can pick up plenty of pollen blowing about from other flowers. But, when it is wet pollen levels are low and flowers rely on self-pollination which doesn’t occur if the ear or a band in the ear is sterile.