Agrovista - Technical and Soil Health updates from Lamport AgX

Novel agronomy techniques and soil health developments prove a popular draw at Lamport AgX

Hundreds of visitors flocked to Agrovista’s flagship trials site, Lamport AgX recently, to catch up with a wide range of innovative crop and soil research and development.

Lamport AgX, situated on heavy land in Northamptonshire, has become a leading testbed for crop rotations and innovative use of crops to help with blackgrass control and has gained recognition as a major resource investigating many aspects of soil health, including cultivations and the use of cover crops.

Here are just some of the highlights that drew in visitors from across the country.

Companion planting – a sustainable approach?

Winter wheat and beans

Companion cropping remains an important theme at Lamport AgX. This season saw the launch of a winter wheat/winter beans project to help manage nitrogen more effectively.

Technical manager Mark Hemmant said: ″We wanted to see if we could save on nitrogen costs and increase residual nitrogen, while introducing diversity into the rotation, and to see if there is any interaction with blackgrass, all the while maintaining a profitable output.

″Then, a few weeks ago, new Sustainable Farming Incentive options were released, including a companion cropping option on arable and horticultural land to manage nutrient use efficiency, worth £55/ha.″

Three bean seed rates were compared – none (winter wheat only), winter wheat plus 40 beans/sq m and winter wheat plus 20 beans/sq m, overlaid with four soil-applied nitrogen regimes (0kg/ha, 90kg/ha 130kg/ha + MZ28 and 180 kg/ha) and three destruction dates for the beans.

″We’ve taken the view of growing wheat as the cash crop and beans as the companion crop,″ Mark said. ″The new SFI option says the companion crop does not have to last the whole life of the cash crop. We looked at taking beans out early, spraying them off at T2, or taking them to harvest, whilst aiming to maximise nitrogen input.″

Observations show the no-nitrogen extreme is a non-starter, although observations do show the bean plants contribute something to the wheat crop. At the other extreme, using 180kg N/ha, beans appeared less healthy.

″Is the wheat crop too competitive, or have we made the beans lazy by applying nitrogen?″ Mark asked. ″We don’t yet know the answer, but we may not get a legacy effect for the next crop.″

The 90kg N/ha plot looked much better. ″This suggests we might get a benefit from the beans and obtain a nitrogen saving.″

The final nitrogen regime limited soil-applied N to 130kg/ha and topped up with a slow-release foliar N, as in MZ28. ″The beans in this one don’t look as lazy as the full 180kg/ha,″ said Mark. ″This might be the more sustainable approach.″

Oats and beans

The Lamport team is also investigating whether last year’s excellent results achieved by growing winter beans and winter oats together (boats) after a run of cover crop/ spring cereal sequences can be achieved using spring-sown beans and oats.

Niall Atkinson, consultant and trials co-ordinator at Lamport AgX, said: ″Introducing spring boats is a natural progression given the importance of spring crops in controlling blackgrass on this site.

″The only inputs used on this plot were glyphosate pre-drilling and the oats and beans seed. Our objective is to maximise oat production – the beans are there to provide nutrition to the spring oat crops and provide a synergistic root effect. The crop looks reasonable and very clean.

″However, all our work at Lamport has shown that seedbed nutrition is important when direct-drilling spring cereals into a desiccated cover crop with no soil movement. Beans can’t supply nutrition this early so we established another plot and put 220kg of DAP down the spout, giving us 40kg of N and 102Kg of P.

″It has done fantastic job in getting oats established earlier, but it cost about £160/ha when fertiliser prices were higher. We will be looking at replacing some or all of this nutrition with some bioscience products in the future. But we haven’t used anything else – no fungicides, no PGRs, no extra nitrogen and no herbicides, and both plots look beautiful and clean.″

Herbicide planning key to early cover crop establishment

Choice of herbicides is becoming increasingly important the less that soil is moved, due to residue problems that can affect the establishment and performance of the following crop.

Small-seeded cover crops that are blown into the preceding standing cash crop ahead of harvest are particularly susceptible.

Niall Atkinson, consultant and trials co-ordinator at Lamport AgX, said: ″It is so important to get these covers established as soon as we can to maximise the benefits. Blowing seed on using a pneumatic spreader three weeks ahead of harvest can really help.

″But the first two or three years we had very little success with this method due to the effect of residual chemistry on the cover crop seedlings. The less soil we move, the more potential issues we have. So on this site, if we know we are going to blow on a cover before harvest, we need to plan.

″We don’t use sulfonylureas in the spring and limit autumn applications of diflufenican to 60g/ha, and even then we would look to move a little soil after putting the cover crop in. We ran a straw rake through the established cover crop to help chit grassweeds too. It did a great job.″

Profitable winter wheat returns to Lamport

Despite high grassweed pressure at Lamport, around 2000 blackgrass plants/sq m, Agrovista has demonstrated for several years that clean crops of winter wheat can be achieved, even when sown in September.

″However, you need to stick to the guidelines or risk going backwards,″ said Niall Atkinson, consultant and trials co-ordinator at Lamport AgX. ″Autumn-sown winter wheat after a run of autumn cover crop/spring cereals has looked clean and healthy, with scarcely a blackgrass head to be seen.

″We’ve also been alternating winter wheat with an autumn cover crop/spring crop with success. As part of this, we’re also looking at using wheat as the spring cash crop, which could help growers struggling to find a profitable winter or spring break crop to grow on heavy land under high blackgrass pressure.

″Many people used to grow profitable continuous wheat until they were beaten by grass weeds. We know we can deal with grass weeds in the cover crop/spring wheat rotation, so we are going a step further, looking at alternating this sequence with winter wheat, and now two cover crop/spring crop sequences followed by winter wheat.″

The alternating season plot is now in its third harvest. ″Although we have not achieved the winter wheat yields we get after spring beans, perhaps 1t/ha down, but we have got 7-8t/ha of spring wheat for years on this site. If we can get that and follow up with 9-10t/ha of winter wheat, that would be quite a profitable rotation. Time will tell if we can keep it going.″

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