GRDC Canopy Management Workshop, November 25 and 26, 2008
Crop canopy management and manipulation of crop canopy is seen as having great potential to improve crop yield and quality. It also has the capacity to reduce yield variability, help to balance input costs to seasonal variability and thus better manage profit and financial risk, and reduce excessive use of nitrogen fertilisers, nitrate leaching and runoff and thus reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Improvements in water use efficiency (WUE) and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) are both key indicators of success.
Canopy management is achieved via a range of tactics and tools and is defined by N Poole as “The manipulation of crop inputs to achieve optimum profitability (grain) through solar radiation interception and dry matter partitioning for a particular environment.”
Some of the key pillars of canopy management include:
- Movement of key inputs (particularly N) from “at seeding” to “between tillering and stem elongation” – has allowed us to manipulate the size and duration of canopy
- Fungicides which have enabled green canopy to be maintained for longer across a wide range of crop types and varieties with lower reliance on genetics alone as used to be the case.
- Defoliation strategies such as grazing pre GS30 have provided much needed valuable winter feed in the Southern and Western Grains Regions – often with no or with negligible impact on subsequent crop grain yield.
- Plant Growth Regulators (PGR’s) which provide tools to help manage lodging in high yielding crops, but also have the potential to manipulate and manage canopy to better balance pre and post anthesis water use.
- Balancing the selection of variety, agronomy (sowing rate / row spacing), sowing date and phenology and nutritional strategy, to optimise profit and minimise risk in the face of varying seasonal outcomes.
Below are key resources generated as a result of the workshop:
Report
Presentations
|
Defining canopy management. Overview of canopy management research, key research issues and directions |
Nick Poole |
|
Regional adoption of canopy management practices |
Geoff Fosbery, Bill Long, Mick Faulkner, John Stuchbery, Greg Giblett |
|
Regional overview of what crops are treated for which diseases |
Steve Simpfendorfer, Geoff Thomas, Grant Hollaway |
|
The role and place for better performing / longer acting and higher cost fungicides |
Garth Wickson, Andrew Wells, Mick Faulkner, Nick Poole, Geoff Fosbery |
|
Spray coverage - how important is it with different fungicides? |
Andrew Wells, Allan Mayfield |
|
Variable rate fungicides based on canopy density |
Allan Mayfield |
|
Measuring disease symptoms, yield, quality impacts and fungal biomass |
Richard Oliver |
|
Issues of managing a suite of pathogens |
Allan Mayfield |
|
Resistance and fungicides |
Richard Oliver |
|
Matching strategy to varietal resistance and environment |
Nick Poole, Steve Simpfendorfer, Barry Haskins |
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Resistance ratings. Using adult plant resistance in a canopy management strategy. Can we provide better or more simple advice on how to use adult plant resistance? |
Nick Poole, Steve Simpfendorfer, Col Wellings |
|
Feedback mechanisms on pathotype surveys - what is desired? |
Col Wellings, Bill Long |
|
Missed spray strips and disease epidemiology |
Steve Simpfendorfer, Geoff Thomas |
