There’s no doubt that Irish companies did a tremendous job in sourcing imported seed varieties in time for the 2024 planting season. One might suggest, this is only a job half done.
With crops now in the ground, farmers need the agronomic advice to ensure they are managing these new varieties in the most appropriate manner.
It was very noticeable at the recent Teagasc spring crop walks, that advisors and tillage consultants were extremely vague in the advice they offered, where the growing of the imported cereal varieties is concerned.
Questions concerning straw length, optimal nitrogen application rates and disease control programme were very much to the fore at these events.
However, details on how to address these issues were hard to discern.
Seed companies
One very obvious way forward would be for the seed companies to host a farm walk dedicated to the management of imported spring barley varieties.
There was a very large acreage of spring barley planted out at the end of April and the beginning of this month.
These crops will be going through their various growth stages at a fair rate of knots right now, so time is of the essence, I would suggest.
Failing this, there is an imperative for the seed companies to put all the agronomy-related information that they have on imported cereal varieties into the public domain with immediate effect.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) also has a role to play in this regard.
It’s my understanding that a number of varieties now being grown on Irish farms were previously looked at in the context of official trials undertaken in this country.
So, again, whatever back catalogue of agronomy-related information that is stored away in the DAFM vaults should be unearthed now and made public in the most effective way possible.
Looking ahead, the use of so much imported seed this year gives rise to the fundamental question: Will there be enough home-produced seed of cereal varieties proven under Irish trial conditions to meet the needs of local tillage farmers this coming autumn and into the spring of 2025?
Again, this is an issue which DAFM and the various seed companies might wish to go public on over the coming days and weeks.