Earlier this week, I was in crops in north Cork and my general comment is that crops look well.

The majority of spring crops in the country are a picture, thanks in the main to the quality of work being done by growers. And for those who did not have the option to combine drill P and K, a good seedbed is the next best compromise where fertilizer was put into the seedbed.

But there are still a few crops about where the quality of work leaves a bit to be desired. It is always disappointing to see good, expensive seed poorly sown and being destroyed by birds because it is not properly covered.

As well as the loss of seed, this also leaves a blank in the crop and that is missing yield, despite all of the inputs being applied.

That said, the majority of spring crops look very well at the early emergence stage. A small number of crops were just emerging, but the majority were at the two- to three-leaf stage and starting to tiller.

The recent rain and good soil temperatures are also driving weed growth and there are many weeds now visible in these crops.

These are mainly the normal spring weeds, so there’s nothing in particular to worry about, unless you have SU resistance.

But aphid numbers continue to increase and the presence of BYDV on neighbouring winter crops increases the risk that aphids could be carrying virus.

Winter barley

There was a large proportion of winter crops across the areas I travelled through and winter barley was the biggest of the three cereals.

Crops looked well and most were nice and uniform as flag leaves glistening in the overcast light. Some crops had a significant proportion of their awns showing.

The crops I walked into were clean, but they differed in the amount of blotching from different sources that was in the base of the crop.

And while some lower leaves were senescing, this was happening as a result of lack of light rather than disease. There had been a bit of rhyncho in some of the crops at one point, but this looks to be satisfactorily controlled.

While rusts are not normally associated with crops in Cork, I did find some brown rust on volunteer plants adjacent to crops.

This means that the risk of infection is real and that all barley crops are potentially at risk from infection if not protected. Warm weather favours brown rust, so it has not been favoured by our recent conditions.

There was a mix of two-row and six-row varieties in the area but there was no major visible difference. Indeed, I was in one crop which was a sown mix of both two- and six-row varieties. Both types were heading out in the mixed crop.

I was in one really excellent crop of six-row variety and I have to think it was a hybrid showing hybrid vigour, i.e. volume. This was a very full crop and was not too tall, but neither did it seem very strong.

One crop of winter barley that I saw was quite disappointing – it had what looked like stunted BYDV patches in the field. However, these were probably not BYDV in that the tips of the newer leaves did not carry a yellow symptom. There was a wee bit of blackening on the roots but my fear is that I was looking at pH issues and associated hunger. There seem to be more of these problems about this year and I wonder if we lost a lot of lime in the heavy winter rain and the open soil.

Winter wheat

Winter wheat crop stage was variable and generally between the second last leaf emerging and the flag leaf visible. Wheat crops showed a bit more variation in growth stage and crop canopy. Rotation and field management may be part of the reason for this.

Many of the crops I saw were heavily tillered but were still not very bulky and they were still quite short. Many crops also had a lot of yellow blotching on recent leaves, probably resulting from spray applied in recent weeks which was followed by cold conditions. Or else a relatively “hot” product had been applied.

Most of the wheat was at second last leaf emerging to flag leaf emerging stage. There was a lot of black spotting on leaf lesions at the base of the crops, but much of this is unlikely to have been septoria. There was certainly some septoria in the crop, but there was also an amount of lesion that did not look like typical septoria.

I saw no major signs of eyespot in these crops, nor did I notice any indication of either brown or yellow rust.

Crops varied from being very full to being quite open, but both can still deliver high yield potential. There is little doubt but that septoria is present but I wonder if we are seeing the return of Septoria nodorum, as well as tritici, given the different shape of many lesions and that fact that pycnidia are often not clearly visible.

Winter oats

All crops are now at flag leaf emerging to emerged stage. Colour is generally good and crops are generally clean. There is a bit of Fusarium visible on the stem and this showed the typical notched stem symptom.

In the crop, infected lower leaf sheaths look watery and the base of the leaf, just at the axle, is dead while the leaf is still green.

Crops are generally free of most other diseases, but there was a bit of mildew in a few crops that carried a very strong colour.