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Experimenting with underleaf blight control A Cambridgeshire potato growers is planning to run trials next season to determine whether underleaf spraying will enable him to effectively control blight at reduced cost. The 15 acres of trial plots, at Burgess Farms' Stanley Farm at Yaxley, will be sprayed at varying rates using a 24m Knight Challenger self-propelled sprayer fitted with the DropSpray system and monitored by an independent agronomist. "We had planned to run the trials this year but it was June before the droplegs were fitted, by which time we had already carried out three conventional blight sprays," explains Burgess Farm's farm business manager, Andrew Howseman. "However, even though the crop foliage was getting big, and we were concerned that the floating legs would not run through it, we decided to try it out." He said the results were so impressive that it was decided to use the system on the entire 320 acres for the rest of the season, albeit using standard application rates. "The legs ran through the crop like a knife through butter, with no damage whatsoever, and coverage and penetration were excellent," said Mr Howseman. "It certainly kept blight at bay, but of course this could have been the case with conventional spraying. Now, we need to have the confidence to reduce spray rates on the entire crop and, hopefully, the trials will verify that this will be possible." |
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