Products Sugar Beet Special Other Crop Specials

Crop Special - Sugar Beet

A guide to the timing and use of adjuvants in sugar beet

Use the left-hand menu to jump to specific problems/solutions

diseases

Problems

Powdery mildew (Erisyphe betae)

  • Powdery mildew is a common disease in sugar beet appearing late July/early August as powdery pustules on the upper sides of the outer most leaves.
High risk conditions are:
Warm dry weather in late summer
Susceptible varieties e.g. Aspect, Esmeralda, Roberta, Raskal

Rust (Uromyces betae)

  • Rust is seen as reddish-brown pustules, killing some older leaves
High risk conditions are:
Warm damp weather
Irrigated crops
Susceptible varieties e.g. Aspect, Latoya, Dorena, Radar, Rayo
Late lifted crops

Ramularia

  • Seen as circular, pale-brown leaf spots, Ramularia occurs most years in the South west and can defoliate a crop in wet summers.
  • Up to 10% yield response can result from a triazole treatment.
High risk conditions are:
Wet summers

Solutions

  • These diseases are controlled by an application of a triazole fungicide in July.
  • Triazoles, such as cyproconazole, flusilazole and propiconazole, are the most widely used fungicides. Recently epoxiconazole plus pyraclostrobin has been approved in sugar beet.
  • Even in low disease pressure years, a fungicide treatment can consistently deliver a 4t/ha extra beet from the physiological greening effect. Fungicides are often used as a tool to match area with quota.

Performance of triazole fungicides, as well as strobilurins, will be enhanced by the addition of Arma.

Arma in mix with fungicides:
• helps to retain and spread the fungicides onto the waxy leaf surface
• helps penetration into the plant where it is needed.
• ensures the most robust fungicide performance, even at low doses

 

 

 

 

weeds

Problems

Broad-leaved weeds

  • Broad-leaved weeds compete heavily with young beet plants and must be controlled to the highest level in order to maximise yield potential. Weeds appear in flushes over many weeks.
  • One tall weed per square metre left uncontrolled can reduce yield by 10%. Tall competitive weeds include fat-hen, redshank and volunteer rape.
  • Weeds in sugar beet make harvesting more difficult and more costly.
  • They can interfere with clamping and can affect the processing, if taken into the factory.
  • Mature weeds can shed seed and increase the weed problem on the farm.
  • Key broad-leaved weeds are black bindweed, knotgrass, fat-hen, redshank, cleavers, fool’s parsley, volunteer rape and polygonums.

Grass-weeds

  • Grass weeds compete with the young beet crop for nutrients and moisture.
  • Sugar beet can be used as a break to hit resistant grass-weeds in the rotation as some herbicides, such as desmedipham, are different in their mode of action to those used in cereals.
High risk conditions are:
When weeds emerge at the same time as the crop because early beet is very uncompetitive
Warm spring conditions that encourage rapid weed emergence

Solutions

  • It is important to control weeds early before they compete with the crop or become difficult to control, whilst making sure that there is minimal harm to the crop.
  • On average a sugar beet crop receives 5 herbicide sprays, starting with a pre-emergence herbicide in March followed by repeat low-dose post-emergence sprays through to early June.
  • It is important to control weeds at the cotyledon stage to get the most cost-effective control.
  • Herbicide costs account for over 85-90% of the total cost of sprays in sugar beet.

Toil adds to the effective performance of many broad-leaved and grass-weed herbicides in sugar beet. It enhances the performance of foliar-acting post-emergence herbicides by improving coverage and speed of uptake. The addition of Toil will help achieve the same level of control with a reduced dose or improve the treatment performance overall.

In TAG trials Toil gave a better performance than mineral oils, increasing the control of mayweed from 64% with oil to 85% with Toil. It also increased the control of fat hen from 41% with mineral oil to 77% with Toil.

Weed Control
Herbicides and Toil

TRIAL 1
Treatment
Crop safety
26 Jun
Weed control 1 Jul
No./m2
% control
Untreated
8.5
33.1
-
A
9.8
3.3
90.0
A + mineral oil
9.8
1.7
94.9
A + Toil
10.0
1.5
95.5
B
9.3
10.8
67.4
B + mineral oil
9.8
6.2
81.3
B + Toil
9.5
4.8
85.5

A T1 Goltix + Actipron, T2 Betanal E + Venzar Flow, T3 Betanal E + Magnum
B T1,T2, T3 Debut + Betanal E + Venzar

TRIAL 2
Treatment
Crop safety
23 Jul
Weed control 13 Jul
No./m2
% control
Untreated
8.8
77.9
-
A + mineral oil
9.8
8.4
89.2
A + Toil
10.0
10.8
86.1
B + mineral oil
9.3
22.7
70.9
B + Toil
9.5
8.4
89.2
C + mineral oil
8.3
28.3
63.7
C + Toil
9.3
15.4
80.2

A Goltix + Betanal Flo (x3)
B T1 Pyramin; then Magnum + Betanal Flo (x2)
C Magnum + Betanal Flo (x3)

pests

Problems

Aphids and Beet Yellows Virus

  • Aphids tranmit the damaging viruses BYV (Beet Yellows Virus) and BMYV (Beet Mild Yellowing Virus).
  • Threshold for foliar treatment is one wingless green aphid per four plants up to the 12 leaf stage.
High risk conditions are:
Mild winters with few ground frosts during January-February
Beet clamps nearby
Delayed drilling

Solutions

  • Aphids and virus yellows are generally controlled by the use of a seed treatment such as imidacloprid (Gaucho) which is applied to over 75% of all sugar beet seed. Such treatments give over 10 weeks protection. Clothianidin (Poncho Beta) was registered more recently.
  • If a foliar aphicide is to be used, it is usually applied in May to June.

 

 

programme timings PDF Version (156k)

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