Blank grain sites in winter barley ears.

[robbie]

Fingers crossed no storms then !

We always try to avoid pgr's as we want all the straw we can get for the hogs, saying that I have got an odd patch or two going down so it might come to bite me in the arse.

 

[Jon 3085]

I agree ,but combining one way , humps of straw everywhere and pigeons on all the down bits makes us use 2 x canopy! Pig muck , wind and rain in June makes me nervous without pgr.

 

[marco]

Boron, the essential nutrient for grain fill.

 

[robbie]

I thought boron only affected beet and rape.

 

[Farmer T]

This is why I love this forum- I've found exactly the same in our winter barley and was going to post pics and ask why.

However this forum also confuses me as you often get 10 different views on a question!

We've got Venture with missing blanks. Soil indicies are decent, never had this before.

From the answers on here the lack of proper vernalisation this year would link the other cases and mine. Will ask at Cereals if they've seen it elsewhere.

 

[Exfarmer]

If you have blank grain sites in a field with a power cable going over check underneath and see if same symptoms present . If not copper is the problem.
Pig muck does not contain the enhanced levels of copper that used to be present, since it was banned as a growth promoter

 

[jack6480]

Hi does anyone know what is the cause of this, my tower barley has this problem I think, some fields worse than others.

 

[jack6480]

photo

 

[Exfarmer]

Probably the nasty frost we had

 

[spin cycle]

what frost?....variety reaction to dry time?.....seed rep blaming frost is very convenient for him methinks

 

[Exfarmer]

We had 2 very nasty frosts in April, combined with warm days , which is the worst you can get.

 

[organicguy]

There were thousands of acres of barley written off by late frosts 20+ years ago, mainly one variety, cannot remember the name. My view is that if the nutrition and moisture is there it will compensate with good hectolitre weights.

 

[Pan mixer]

There were thousands of acres of barley written off by late frosts 20+ years ago, mainly one variety, cannot remember the name. My view is that if the nutrition and moisture is there it will compensate with good hectolitre weights.

I remember that, was it Siberia? a late frost made lots of blank site in some of mine years ago but it will compensate, I stopped worrying about it then.

 

[David.]

I think it was 1987, varieties at the time were Magie and Marinka I reckon, as you say -8 frost in late May did for thousands of acres. Ours was hit but we took it to harvest and the final kick was rampant brown rust late in the season. Think we had about 35 cwt/acre in the end.

 

[Gong Farmer]

1990 and 1995 had frosts that killed whole ears (and crops), the frosts we had this spring looked like they might do the same but thankfully no reports. Not surprised to see partially killed ears though.

 

[Breakthru]

Light land, awns crinckled, copper def the most likely cause but excarbated by the late frost. As per a previous thread about Osr you need to be careful about applying individual trace elements as you can artificially induce an imbalance.
Historically my favourite fungicide was mancozeb, manganese, copper and zinc.
The latter part tends to dictate the size of ear as per number of grains if your timing is right but the Mn and especially Cu in WB is very important.
Very deficient soils will require more than a little rev up.

 

[TelesnaAg]

When the frost hit, were the heads out or down in boot?...reason i ask is frost over here normally sends it white...and barley gets a bit more protection if heads are low down in crop...upper leaves would normally show some signs as well if it burnt that hard? Another factor with varieties can be crop sugar levels, high sugar crops are harder to freeze...

Copper,boron and K is a big one...the test says they are low but could be exacerbated if crop is very heavy...to that sort of damage from lack of copper i would have thought you would see leaf symptoms plain as day.

Not sure what level of vern your english breeds require but i would have thought even a mild winter by UK standards would have to be sufficient!..You could sow some seed now even if in garden plot and water up...see if it goes to head...i know its may but i reckon it would be well worth a shot...

Its well worth doing alot of research on this one as you would hate to find out it's not frost down the track and costed yourself alot of income...

Will follow this one..

Ant...

 

[jack6480]

Agronomist doing tissue test to see if deficiency, it had growth regs at the end of April, hard frosts at end of April to. Variety is tower

Previous crop was wheat and fields have either had bio solids, pig muck, Bull muck or digest.