Nick Poole from FAR Australia provides an excellent explanation of how to target fungicide applications for the best economic return. He describes the value of focusing on critical growth stages and their ‘money leaves’, the best way to manage disease risk in crops before tillering, and the importance of protecting fungicide effectiveness for the long term.

Growers in the north could consider fungicide resistance less of a threat than growers in the south and west, however there is no room for complacency.

As Professor Levente Kiss from the University of Southern Queensland’s Centre for Crop Health points out in this podcast, as long as there are fungal crop diseases there is a risk of fungal resistance. Barley, wheat and pulses can all be affected.

Northern growers need to appreciate the importance of rotating and mixing fungicides, including as seed treatments, in order not to encourage fungicide resistance in important diseases such as barley net blotches, mung bean powdery mildew, wheat powdery mildew and septoria tritici blotch.

In Western Australia, outbreaks of fungicide resistance have occurred in several important diseases of barley. Resistance is a significant but preventable problem that can largely be managed by taking care not to repeatedly expose a pathogen to the same product or chemical Mode of Action Group.

It is important for growers to recognise that this management regime can include fungicide seed treatments and in-furrow fungicide applications, as well as foliar sprays later in the season. Fungicide rotations to manage and prevent fungicide resistance need to take all of these applications into account.

Geoff Thomas, plant pathologist from the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development WA, discusses the importance of using an integrated disease management program to reduce disease pressure and manage fungicide use and resistance in WA cropping systems.

Long-practiced crop rotations are an effective non-chemical means of reducing (or even eliminating) soil and stubble borne fungal pathogens in paddocks. DPIRD plant pathologist Geoff Thomas discusses the continued importance of practicing crop rotation for disease control.