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Arable Farming
Cropping
Drilling mixed barley varieties.....
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<blockquote data-quote="Two Tone" data-source="post: 6952606" data-attributes="member: 44728"><p>I have grown Blends very successfully. Sinclair McGill promoted it in the 80’s for both wheat and Barley. The problem is that the breeders didn’t like the idea and of course, nowadays the chemical companies own so many of the breeders too.</p><p></p><p>I aslo worked with a fascinating chap called Professor Martin Wolfe, who was the last Plant Pathologist working for the old PBI Plant Breeding Institute, before it got de-nationalised.</p><p></p><p>He did a lot of research into Blends.</p><p>The expectation was that if any of the 3 varieties got the susceptible disease they were prone to, the other 2 would make up for it and yield reduction without fungicides would be minimal.</p><p>What he actually found was that the other 2 would protect the susceptible variety and in a high disease year, he would see yields of about 10% higher than any of the individual varieties within the blend, having used no fungicides whatsoever!</p><p></p><p>The problem today might be trying to find somebody who will blend varieties for you. Also that we do have some astonishingly good disease resistant varieties available that might not need any fungicides. However, they tend to lose this ability quite quickly, so IMO Blends might still be a good option.</p><p></p><p>Once again as [USER=4612]@ajd132[/USER] puts it, we are being farmed by the chemical companies into spending money we don’t need to or in this case against protecting ourselves against the need to spend money!</p><p></p><p>Give it a go. You will end up with the same yield in a low disease year and a higher one in a high disease year.</p><p>But many won’t notice, simply because somebody (We all know who!) will persuade them to give it just as much fungicide as usual!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Two Tone, post: 6952606, member: 44728"] I have grown Blends very successfully. Sinclair McGill promoted it in the 80’s for both wheat and Barley. The problem is that the breeders didn’t like the idea and of course, nowadays the chemical companies own so many of the breeders too. I aslo worked with a fascinating chap called Professor Martin Wolfe, who was the last Plant Pathologist working for the old PBI Plant Breeding Institute, before it got de-nationalised. He did a lot of research into Blends. The expectation was that if any of the 3 varieties got the susceptible disease they were prone to, the other 2 would make up for it and yield reduction without fungicides would be minimal. What he actually found was that the other 2 would protect the susceptible variety and in a high disease year, he would see yields of about 10% higher than any of the individual varieties within the blend, having used no fungicides whatsoever! The problem today might be trying to find somebody who will blend varieties for you. Also that we do have some astonishingly good disease resistant varieties available that might not need any fungicides. However, they tend to lose this ability quite quickly, so IMO Blends might still be a good option. Once again as [USER=4612]@ajd132[/USER] puts it, we are being farmed by the chemical companies into spending money we don’t need to or in this case against protecting ourselves against the need to spend money! Give it a go. You will end up with the same yield in a low disease year and a higher one in a high disease year. But many won’t notice, simply because somebody (We all know who!) will persuade them to give it just as much fungicide as usual! [/QUOTE]
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Drilling mixed barley varieties.....
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