Serenade Opti delivering better disease management and IPM benefits in Victoria
About
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Category
- Grower Stories
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Date
03 December, 2019
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Location
Yarra Valley
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About
Category
- Grower Stories
Date
03 December, 2019
Location
Yarra Valley
As a specialist in berry fruits, John Frisina is focused on helping Yarra Valley growers become more efficient and productive through better pest, disease and nutrition management.
Image: John Frisina (L) and Andres Baker (R)
The Yarra Valley is regarded as a medium to high rainfall area, with a typical spring producing significant rain events and low temperatures.
“The crops are often exposed to high moisture for prolonged periods and we have fairly high disease pressure so there's a lot of emphasis on good fungicide programmes,” John says.
“Once we move into the latter months of the year, it dries out and temperatures go up into the high thirties and forties, so then we're battling insect and mite pressure. So, the emphasis is on integrated pest management.”
The climate means a lot of effort is put into helping growers manage both their pests and diseases in more ways than one. In terms of IPM this means stewardship around which products to use so as not to disrupt the insect predator populations that they're trying to encourage to persist in the crop.
However, get the pest and disease management wrong and the result can be costly.
“Even a day or two delay in spraying can cause significant crop loss and obviously catching up, especially if harvest intervals can't be maintained, can be very costly for the grower,” John says.
The introduction of Serenade® Opti from Bayer in recent years has been significant for local growers, particularly as biofungicides hadn’t previously been commonly used.
Serenade Opti controls botrytis in grapevines and strawberries and suppresses bacterial spot in tomatoes, capsicums and chillies.
“We hadn't been exposed to that type of product on a commercial scale, and we saw it as a good opportunity to break up the chemistry currently used for managing botrytis in strawberries and bacterial spot in tomatoes,” John says.
“The other benefit was that Serenade Opti gave us an option that would allow us to continue on with our IPM work as well. So, it was very good for what we do in our area.
One of John’s clients is the Fresh Berry Co, a significant family-owned business producing tomatoes and strawberries at Coldstream, and strawberries in Queensland as well.
Image: Andres Baker from Fresh Berry Co.
As Andres Baker from the company explains, their problem diseases are botrytis (grey mould), charcoal rot and powdery mildew, as well as a number of pests.
“If those diseases are not controlled properly we can lose a lot of fruit, and they will kill the plants, so it's not very good,” Andres says.
“In terms of good disease control management, prevention is key, we're monitoring them all hours of the day.”
In 2019 Serenade Opti was added to the Fresh Berry Co spray programme, and the results have been so positive they are now using it across all their blocks.
“Serenade Opti is a good prevention product - when the flowers are coming up and there might be rain coming, which could mean more disease pressure, we spray Serenade Opti just to protect the plants,” Andres explains.
“Importantly, we also make sure we rotate Serenade Opti with a range of other chemicals in our program so diseases don't become resistant to them.
“Serenade Opti has good compatibility, so if have a pest we want to get rid of, we can put an insecticide in the tank as well, instead of spraying one chemical and then straight after spraying a second time, so it's definitely efficient, which is key.”
Andres believes the nil withholding period on the product is also important, particularly when warm weather means strawberries are being picked almost daily.
“Strawberries come on quick, and tomatoes as well, so if you don't pick them on the day that you need to, you could lose some of your profit,” Andres says.
“Also, Serenade Opti is not harmful to predatory bugs which is good, so we can use it in our IPM programme, it fits in well.”
Knowing how important IPM is at the Fresh Berry Co, John Frisina has made it a focus in working with the team.
“They were more interested in having products that fit their IPM because they are very heavily into IPM and the fact that Serenade Opti had a zero withholding period was critical,” John recalls.
“They were able to use the product confidently knowing that the supermarkets they supply would be quite happy to have a product that did not require any residue management on the fruit.”
While in 2018 Fresh Berry Co used Serenade Opti just on strawberries, 2019 will see them expand its use to tomatoes as well. John believes it’s indicative of a broader industry trend towards biofungicides.
“Serenade Opti is probably the first of many of these types of fungicides that will appear on the market and we think that in the next five to 10 years that they will start to become a significant part of most spray programmes in fruit crops, so they're very important,” he says.
“Products like Serenade Opti will definitely extend the life of the existing products that we do have available and we know how expensive it is to bring new products from inception to market.
“To be able to preserve that good chemistry that we've been used to using by introducing another product such as Serenade Opti is very good.”
Serenade® is a Registered Trademark of the Bayer Group
About
Category
- Grower Stories
Date
03 December, 2019
Location
Yarra Valley
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