2025
Because of the excessive amount of precipitation in spring, a farm from the Chernihiv region faced an unprecedented manifestation of fusarium head blight in its malting barley crops. The risk of losing the harvest arose three times. Nevertheless, the farmer managed to contain the spread of the disease.
This was reported by Serhii Synenko, co-owner of the "Synahro" farm, in a comment for SuperAgronom.com.
He says the excess of precipitation and the cool weather at the end of May — beginning of June also led to uneven sunflower emergence, because of which the plants were delayed in development, and to the flooding out of sunflower and maize patches in the lowlands.
The farm's crop rotation is represented by maize, soybean, sunflower, malting barley and camelina. This year they are also experimenting with growing winter rapeseed. This year the malting barley harvest exceeded 6 t/ha. Serhii Synenko says they could have lost everything if they had not reacted to the threat in time.
"Because it was damp, we had to work with a fungicide on the barley three times in one month. The first treatment was preventive at the stem-elongation phase. The next — before flowering. And then we saw a manifestation of fusarium already at the flowering phase. We reapplied the fungicide DOT over the ear and the disease did not spread," he said.
Another disease that caused trouble this year is white mould (sclerotinia) on sunflower. Serhii Synenko adds that most farmers in the region are having difficulties with sclerotinia this year. Plants in the fields fall out in circles, the stems break, the disease spreads to the heads. Even the neighbours' soybean is affected.
For the "Synahro" farm, as a processor of oilseed crops, control of sclerotinia takes a not insignificant place. Therefore, on the farm sunflower is returned to the field no earlier than after 4 years. This year, for prophylaxis at the star phase, they applied the fungicide Split Duo.
The sunflower yield obtained was 2.5 t/ha, soybean — 3 t/ha.
