A significant proportion of this year’s field bean crop has been sown late into warm seedbeds. These crops will develop quickly, be more susceptible to disease and have a high demand for nutrients, especially nitrogen (N).
Disease control is an important insurance to protect yield. Both Chocolate Spot and Bean Rust often devastate yield and a two spray fungicide programme is standard on spring sown beans.
These diseases often develop quickly and strongly without advanced notice, so the insurance of a planned two-spray fungicide at early and late flowering is critical.
According to John McCarthy from Syngenta: “Elatus Era is a great choice for one of the fungicide applications on beans. It controls chocolate spot, as well as any alternative fungicide and has a definite edge over others for rust control.
“It can be used at either the early or late flower timings though we prefer early flower, that’s when rust disease begins to develop, and it is better to tackle it before it has a chance to establish.
“Elatus Era at a rate of 0.66L/ha on beans is probably the best value available.”
Nitrogen boost
Syngenta has also brought an exciting new bacteria based biofertilizer product to the market this year.
Margaret Murphy from Syngenta said: “Vixeran allows many crops to fix nitrogen directly from the atmosphere.
“Beans fix their own nitrogen through root nodules, but these nodules senesce and stop fixing nitrogen around the time of pod filling.
“A foliar application of Vixeran supplements the nitrogen supply to the crop allowing the plant to carry on photosynthesizing and increasing yield.
“There is some great data from 2023 trials showing excellent consistency in yield delivery.”
Margaret explained: “We recommend Vixeran on beans any time between the four-leaf stage and first flowers open.
“A combination of Vixeran and Elatus Era at that early flowering stage will be a good solution for those not wanting an extra pass through the crop to apply the Vixeran.
“Cereals and field beans are our focus with Vixeran this year. But, there is potential and we are looking at its performance on many other crops, including beet, maize and oilseed rape.”
