Disease-free season and rising prices give grain growers a boost

WITH a recent firming of world cereal prices, grain growers may be slightly more optimistic than they have been for a couple of years. Aiding this upbeat mood is the fact that this year, their crops are coming through with lower costs of production.

Speaking this week at Cereals in Practice event outside Dundee, Mark Ballingall, crop consultant with the Scottish Agricultural College, said disease levels in all cereals were extremely low this year and as a result there had, so far, less spraying being carried out.

He did however say that he was finding more crops infested with brome and there were localised patches of blackgrass in some crops in the Borders and up into Fife. Both these weeds are widespread in the grain-growing areas of England but have not yet been of economic significance north of the Border.

Ballingall attributed some of the increase in brome to the increasingly popular practice of sowing after minimum tillage which leaves the trash on the surface of the soil.

"I would recommend that at least one year in every three or four conventional ploughing takes place as this seems to get rid of any problem with brome."

Spring barley growers are also coping with increased areas of meadow grass which does not directly compete with the grain but can have the unfortunate consequence of both slowing down harvesting and increasing moisture levels in the grain.

The green grass holds moisture at harvest, delaying the daily start of combining and when it is mixed through the combine, it can add one or two percent to the moisture of the sample, he stated.

Dealing with the meadow grass problem is not easy as many of the chemicals that were previously used are now off the market. The problem is aggravated with many of those left requiring damp conditions to ensure the residual action works. That is difficult when you get a dry spring.

Taking a much longer view of the cereal industry, Professor Claire Halpin from Dundee University said there was great potential in producing the second generation of biofuels from grain crops.

She accepted that the public perception of this source of energy was not as good as it might be with many people objecting to using crops for fuel when they should be used for food.

However, she and the rest of the large research team now looking at bringing forward new sources of fuel were investigating the straw from the cereal crop which is of low non-food value, especially when it comes from winter wheat crops.

She admitted that it was much more difficult to extract sugar or starch from the straw of a cereal crop but believed that it should be possible to do so within the next five to ten years.

While she is concentrating on the plant side, other parts of the research team are concentrating on other aspects of the work.

The critical part as far as the plant was concerned was in reducing the level of lignin in the straw. This is the 'glue' that holds the plant upright and she has already identified varieties which carry vastly differing levels of lignin in their genetic makeup.

"This work does not affect the yield of grain but it should provide other marketing options for the cereal crop."z