In recent years, farmers have become familiar with Smart beet or Conviso beet. It is a beet crop which can be used in a field which has weed beet and other weeds which are hard to control.

These varieties can tolerate sulphonyl urea herbicides. Smart beet can be sprayed with Conviso One herbicide and this can control weed beet, grass weeds and other weeds such as runch, charlock, wild carrot and cleavers.

However, conventional beet should not be sprayed with this herbicide and the tank should be washed in between spraying Conviso beet and Smart beet.

So far, these varieties have been sugar beet varieties. This means their yield is lower than fodder beet.

However, a new Conviso fodder beet is on the way - Smart Sanya.

Dave Barry of Goldcrop noted that the variety still has one more test to pass before it goes on the market. At the company’s recent open day, he said it looks excellent, has really good leaves, good fresh weight and it ticks all the boxes.

If it does come to the market next season, there is enough seed produced to get supply.

Conviso more important as Debut gone

Dave commented that Conviso beet will have interest from a wider audience now, as Debut herbicide is no longer available.

“The place of Conviso up to now was maybe a weed beet problem. The number of fields that should consider it is going to be much bigger in future because Debut has gone off the market, which is a really good broad spectrum herbicide that’s been used on beet crops for probably 30 years. It solved a whole load of problems when it came along,” Dave said.

He explained that weeds such as runch, Charlock, wild carrot and cleavers will be significantly more difficult to control without Debut, so Conviso will play a role here.

The fact that a fodder beet will be available in the Conviso system makes it more attractive to grow.

Goldcrop trials from 2023 gave yield results for Enermax fodder beet at 39.9t/ac. Conviso sugar beet reached 33.1t/ac. The Conviso fodder beet was just 1t/ac lower than the Enermax fodder beet.