Ryegrass seed scandal

som farmer said:

as with all good product, once the generic versions come out, never quite the same. Our last aussie agrominist, used to tell us 1 litre, for every year, a ley had been down, and 3 weeks before starting cultivations ! Ideal perhaps, but not always possible !

Click to expand...

ollie989898 said:

The label offers guidance for all these things but for some reason many people seem to think they know better and abuse the product. It's probably the most abused chemical on the market. I've known people say they tank mix it with all sorts, even red diesel, I will never know why. Some serious testing is required for these things to even reach the marketplace and it has known and published shortcomings like anything else but people still seem surprised when it doesn't work.

I always avoided the dirt cheap stuff and advised people to stay away from it. Of the failures I have observed over the years, I know the reasons why they failed and it wasn't down to using dirt cheap product I've never heard of.

It did used to make me chuckle how if something unexpected happened, farmers always want to blame the product or the seed first and foremost.

Click to expand...

som farmer said:

well, as a livestock farmer, it sounds ideal, just get r-up resistant clover, which it nearly is, and that will be fantastic !
On the other hand, any resistance, in any crop, unless deliberate, should cause concern, we should be able to buy, with confidence, of the product. As a student, can remember, days spent walking the grass seed crops, pulling anything that shouldn't be there ! I can also remember sowing PRG at home, with the latest, best mix, and finding a certification label in the bag, showing that variety, was 15 yrs old !
Again, as farmers, we are calling for, better, greater varieties of seed, and the breeders are producing/claiming, the new varieties. What is being lost, in doing that ? Varieties may well produce the goods, on ideal test plots, but in the hugely diverse range of soils/farms ? Modern ryegrasses, do not produce the amount of viable seed, they once did.
Resistance is appearing, not only in crops, but wormers, anti-biotics, and bugs, and is going to be one of the greatest problems, humans will face, in the future, lets hope, the breeders/scientists, are working on the problem !!!!!!!!
And, i totally agree, sellers don't give a damn, as long as it gets sold, probably working on the 'remedy', which they will eagerly sell us !!!!

Click to expand...

GeorgeK said:

So blackgrass spreads across the country in contaminated seed and equipment, fair enough it's lapse biosecurity but it's never been intentional. But resistant ryegrass doesn't have to go to the effort of hitching a lift. It's being bagged up, loaded onto trucks and drilled all over the place.
In a few years when it's a massive problem we will probably look back and say "Ah yes, in hindsight that wasn't the smartest thing to be doing"

Click to expand...

WRXppp said:

I had some stubble turnip seed with black grass in it once and trying to send it back was a real palava, just not interested, I’m blackgrass free here and they couldn’t understand the problem, it had a yellow EU standard label on it, anyway they lost my custom over it, major seed house too!

Click to expand...

Great In Grass said:

I'm asked why our stubble turnip seed is more than that supplied by X or Y. Your quote is the perfect explanation with popular varieties brought into the country on yellow or red labels with no control on them at all!

Click to expand...

WRXppp said:

Kevin, I have used you for our stubble turnip seed ever since and I must say you have always supplied blue label high quality seed with exemplary service at very competitive prices!

Click to expand...

DrWazzock said:

I struggle to kill ryegrass leys without 5 litres per ha of round up and even then sometimes it just doesn’t seem to work very well. And to me this is a silly high rate to be using ahead of drilling of another crop and you have to wonder about collateral damage.
Ploughing the ley down seems to be quite effective though so I’m not worrying.
We have round up resistant annual nettles, cranesbill and black bindweed here from what I can see. Either that or they need stupidly high rates to kill them.
Question is do we really want to build a system that fits around glyphosate? Not really, so we are ploughing this autumn and only growing crops which don’t rely on knife edge chemistry. We aren’t taking a chance with blackgrass and chemistry that half works which is just the road to big problems IMO.

Click to expand...

thorpe said:

people around here bragged about how low they could go with atlantis there not bragging now, there lucky if they can grow wheat.

Click to expand...

GeorgeK said:

An article in FW this week I could scarcely believe. A grower of Italian ryegrass for seed documenting his major issues with herbicide resistant ryegrass in the following cereal crops. Says it's getting worse than blackgrass due to to its ability to germinate any time of year, being more competitive and with high resistance to grassweed sprays.

I imagine plants are being selected for resistance because those not killed in the cereal crops survive and produce resistant seeds that grow in the next grass seed crop, and so the problem spreads.

And so what's being done about this godawful menace? Well they're harvesting the seed, bagging it up and shipping it across the country to unsuspecting farmers. That's right, the seed in bags we buy likely already has multiple herbicide resistance and will soon become the next blackgrass... only worse. And we're drilling it in our fields.

I always assumed breeders would have been selecting herbicide susceptible plants so this couldn't happen. What an incredible situation, is it just me or is this irresponsible madness?

Click to expand...

GeorgeK said:

It would be very interesting to put some seed direct from the merchants through that same test and see exactly what problems we might be unwittingly buying in

Click to expand...