From the Ground Up, Issue 78

Pre-emergence herbicides have been the mainstay of maize weed management. This Maize Update discusses factors affecting pre-emergence herbicide success including application timing, modes of action and soil interactions. 

Following a very wet winter, FAR has received a number of requests for information around managing yellow autumn sown crops. This Arable Extra outlines ways to distinguish between nitrogen and sulphur deficiencies and provides some information to support decision making around crop management.

Wet conditions throughout winter 2025 have created challenges for growers across Canterbury. This Arable Extra addresses issues around 1) autumn sown wheat paddocks with drowned out patches and 2) considerations around sowing autumn milling wheat seed in the spring.

This Arable Update summarises yield and profitability results from 47 FAR trials since 2013, comparing programmes with and without a T0, to help guide your decision-making.

Farmers face three levels of biosecurity risk; regional biosecurity incursion risk; border biosecurity, regional biosecurity and on-farm biosecurity. This Maize update discusses the importance of on-farm biosecurity, the one factor you have control over.

The AIMI survey of New Zealand cereal growers, as at 1 July, 2024 is now available online.

This book outlines trial-specific yields and individual cultivar disease ratings for spring sown wheat and barley cultivars included in the 2024-2025 CPT trials.

The Autumn Cereal Cultivar Evaluation Book for 2024/25 is now available to read.

Planting a crop consisting of multiple cereal cultivars (cultivar mixtures) enhances genetic diversity, which can improve both seasonal and long-term agronomic performance and slow or reduce disease spread. To assess the viability of this approach for feed wheat production under current commercial conditions in New Zealand, FAR conducted a series of field trials in Chertsey, Mid Canterbury, between 2021 and 2024.

This Maize Update discusses key issues for consideration in the choice and establishment of over-winter cover crops, along with the results of a five-year trial at FAR’s Northern Crops Research Site which researched the potential for over-winter cover crops to suppress weeds in the following no-till maize grain crop.