New disease guides online

New editions of Agriculture Victoria’s cereal and pulse disease guides are available to download as mobile-friendly e-books.

The 2023 Cereal Disease Guide and 2023 Pulse Disease Guide rank susceptibility of new and commonly grown grains and pulses such as wheat, barley, oats, lentils, faba bean and chickpea.

The guides have been produced with support from Grains Research and Development Corporation and provide updated disease ratings and advice on reducing disease risk this season.

Growers can consult the current disease guide for the latest ratings and definitions to plan disease management.

Agriculture Victoria cereal pathologist Hari Dadu said the release of the updated cereal disease guide complemented earlier advice this season from Agriculture Victoria.

“They contain the latest disease resistance ratings to assist growers with their crop disease management plans and help prevent grain yield loss,” he said.

“Within the guide, we advise on how to proactively manage crop disease risk, particularly stripe rust, which wreaked havoc in wheat crops last year.

cool summer and wet spring that has pushed it back.”

However, Mr Guthrie said late seasons typically created the best wines.

“All good years are late. The longer the grapes are on the vine the more flavour they have, provided they ripen,” he said.

“This year and the previous two are going to be top-quality years, which is always exciting because, at the end of the day, that means good, award-winning wines and good sales.”

Opportunities

Mr Guthrie said every season had different challenges, but he was delighted to be getting the crop off the vine.

“You never know what is coming next when you’re farming but the fruit looks pretty good,” he said.

“Everyone is optimistic as China looks to be opening to trade again soon, our cellar doors are open and best of all we have Grampians Grape Escape approaching, which is a chance to showcase wines and have a party.

“The Grampians area produces some of the world’s best cool climate wines and we’re lucky to be growing grapes in this region.”

Mr Spence said the advantage of a long, slow ripening process was the development of flavour.

“During hot, dry summers you get sugar early and then flavour and everything comes in afterwards,” he said.

“This year we got the flavour early and had to wait for the sugar to come up after.

“Winemakers are pretty chuffed with this year’s samples – they said the sauvignon blanc that we picked off early is amazing.

“This year’s fruit pick was the biggest we have ever had, which shows our processes in the vineyard are getting better.

“We used to be a spur-pruned vineyard, which is quick, easy and gives good results.

“We decided, with the encouragement of a viticulturist, we might be better to convert to cane pruning, which gives exact bud numbers – you don’t get any phantom or water shoots and every bud gives two bunches of fruit. It gives more vigorous growth and more quality bunches, so since we have started the laborious task of cane pruning, it has put about 30 percent productivity back into the vineyard with no more inputs, so it has been a bonus for us.”

Mr Spence said the vines ‘know’ when to remain active and when to be dormant, despite the late harvest.

“While the fruit is on the vines, they will stay pretty healthy, within a week of picking you can see them go ‘thank goodness that’s over’ and they relax and start to go yellow,” he said.

“We have a real bonus going into next year – the vineyard is quite wet, so those vines are going into dormancy for three months, or I call it going to bed, with plenty of moisture around the root zone.

“We have put out a post-harvest fertiliser for them to take that up so that will provide some nutrients for when they boost into budding in mid-September and the process starts again.

“If we get a reasonable, or even average, winter we’re in for another cracking year.”

“Choosing a variety that is less susceptible to disease using the ratings in our guide is a recommended step to keep disease at bay.”

For pulse growers, this year’s edition will be of particular interest as it includes new botrytis grey mould ratings for lentils.

Agriculture Victoria pulse pathologist Joshua Fanning said the varieties GIA Leader, PBA Hallmark XT and PBA Kelpie XT have been provisionally downgraded, meaning they would need to be monitored more closely this year.

“It’s essential for growers to use the latest edition of the disease guide to inform their crop disease management strategy as disease ratings are reviewed and revised annually,” he said.

“Last year’s wet conditions were highly conducive for pulse diseases across Victoria and have impacted the ratings of some varieties and some disease ratings have changed to reflect this.

“Due to the high risk posed by stubble borne diseases growers should not double crop paddocks.”

The 2023 Pulse and Cereal Disease guides are available on the Agriculture Victoria website at agriculture. vic.gov.au/biosecurity/plant-diseases/ grain-pulses-and-cereal-diseases