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Agronomy
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15/11/2024
Lockyer Valley Growers Welcome Innovation
The Windolf family have been farming in Queensland’s salad bowl, the Lockyer Valley, for three generations, but last season was one of the more memorable in terms of disease pressure.
“Last year we had incredible disease pressure,” Mr Windolf said.
“The cucurbits have been tough this last year. They can be looking fantastic and then suddenly down they go.”
Corteva Agriscience Territory Account Manager, Adam Harber (left), Elders Horticultural Agronomist, Greg Teske, Jayson Windolf and James Windolf.
Jayson and his family, including son James, run their cropping operation across approximately 2,000 acres at Windolf Farms, growing lettuce, broccoli, baby leaf spinach, carrots, watermelons, pumpkins, potatoes and onions.
They were among a bustling crowd at the Lockyer Valley Growers Expo, staged at the Gatton Research Facility. The Expo featured vegetable variety demonstrations, machinery and technology displays, and an opportunity to speak with leading vegetable industry supply-chain experts.
It’s an event Elders Horticultural Agronomist, Greg Teske, knows well having worked with growers in the region for decades.
“Industry and the Valley come together, it’s a great event for sharing ideas,” Mr Teske said.
Mr Teske has been working with Windolf Farms on a trial of Verpixo® Adavelt® active, a naturally inspired fungicide from Corteva Agriscience. The flexible new product brings a new mode of action for the control of damaging ascomycete diseases such as botrytis, powdery mildew, gummy stem blight, sclerotinia, alternaria, septoria and many others.
“Verpixo was far better in the trial than all the other products,” Mr Teske said.
“There’s a couple of products I had been using quite a lot over the years and Verpixo outshone them.”
Mr. Windolf said it was a welcome development.
“A new mode of action is great because we are starting to exhaust the ones we’ve relied upon and they’re not doing what they should,” Mr Windolf said.
Verpixo is registered in cucurbits, fruiting vegetables, leafy vegetables, grapes and strawberries. Belonging to the FRAC Group 21, it has no known cross resistance to other fungicide groups making it ideally suited for inclusion in resistance management programs. It can be used for a wide range of crops at multiple growth stages allowing farmers the freedom and flexibility to achieve improved efficiency and disease control.
Lockyer Valley growers Jayson Windolf (left) and James Windolf from Windolf Farms.
Corteva Agriscience Marketing Manager, Nick Koch, said it was critical to work closely with respected agronomists such Mr Teske to help bring new solutions to growers.
“Corteva is a generator of new technologies, working with trusted advisors such as Greg helps us to demonstrate their effectiveness and value as well as receive feedback from growers,” Mr Koch said.
“For example, all the growers we’ve spoken to here at the Lockyer Valley Growers Expo have clearly articulated that new chemistry is great, but it needs to be stewarded.
“There’s a clear need for new chemistry. New chemistry is hard to come by and increasingly the cost to develop and gain regulatory approval has raised the stakes. Ensuring that new products are not overused and are integrated into an effective resistance management strategy is critical to ensure the longevity of these new technologies.”
“The tools in the arsenal to control diseases are shrinking because the onset of fungicide resistance. There are many examples such as the DMI - group 3, strobilurin group -11 and more recently the group 7 – SDHI's which all experiencing varying degrees of developing resistance. Growers are more acutely aware that new chemistry needs to be protected – more so than ever.”
Mr Koch said in further good news for growers, Verpixo’s registration recently expanded to cover additional crops and diseases.
“The benefit of having one product that has the flexibility to control multiple diseases across multiple crops gives growers the freedom to manage their spray programs and takes a lot of pressure off their existing fungicide program.”
Mr Teske welcomed the news of the expanded registration, “That’s a big plus coming into this next season,” he said, “It’s very exciting times ahead”.
