MARCH 2024
CELEBRATING 145 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
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PLANT HEALTH
The big stride to adopting biologicals
This optical illusion shows how Mike Chromczak is dwarfed by his spray rig in an asparagus field. Crop protection is a big responsibility for his 2,000 acres of asparagus, watermelon and rotational crops of corn, soybeans and wheat near Brownsville, Ontario. Photo by Glenn Lowson.
KAREN DAVIDSON Big acres, big boom. That’s the equipment needed to cover the needs of Mike Chromczak who farms asparagus, watermelon and row crops near Brownsville, Ontario. While a sprayer might be hard at work in the field, it’s not necessarily spreading fungicide for Stemphylium leaf blight. It might be foliar fertilizer to boost plant health and stimulate flower growth. That’s the big paradigm shift that’s under way says Brian Rideout, chair of the crop protection section, Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association (OFVGA). Rather than a crop protection program, he thinks in terms of a plant health program. “The learning curve is not gentle,” says Rideout, who manages Manitree Fruit Farms, 400 acres of apples, tender fruit, strawberries and vegetables near Blenheim, Ontario. “It’s a whole-farm approach, not a spot approach. It used to be that you’d pick a target acreage
Meeting with the UN rapporteur Volume 74 Number 03 P.M. 40012319
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and use that as a model for the farm. That no longer works.” Rideout’s transition to integrating biologicals with chemicals has been 20 years in the making. With the registration of more single-site, crop protection products with specific modes of action, Rideout has turned to more biological products that have broad-spectrum control or at least suppression properties. “This is how you build resistance management on the farm,” Rideout explains. “I’m now using fewer conventional products. The building block of plant health is with nutrient management – phosphorus and potassium – to strengthen the immune response of plants.” He realizes that growers aren’t confident yet about a system that requires deeper understanding of the biology of their crops and soil. That in turn requires more awareness of life cycles of disease and insects. He admits that crop scouting is required every two or three days rather than once a week. And the timing of spraying must be well considered, in sync with what’s actually happening
Crop protection, spraying & potatoes @growernews
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in the orchard or field. In the case of the farm’s strawberry production, the number of chemical sprays has been reduced from six to three by increasing soil and foliar nutrition. These mindset changes are no surprise to Jouke Sypkes, horticultural product manager for Belchim Crop Protection since 2015. “The transition we are in favours a more balanced approach to crop health: where biology and chemistry both play significant roles,” he says from his base in Guelph, Ontario. “In crop health programs, we talk about the grower option of bio-priority where biologicals are prioritized in the short term. If there is interest in developing a biology-first approach, we’ll recommend inserting specific bio-stimulants to achieve a specific goal. Bio-pesticides are added to target specific pests on a preventive schedule and/or conventional chemistries are used as targeted, precision applications when thresholds are reached.” Continued on page 3
ON Berry News
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