As FAR’s Nick Poole pointed out at Combinable Crops 2009, growers have had little in the way of new chemistry, particularly fungicides, to apply in recent years.

However, Bayer CropScience is hopeful it will soon be able to break that drought with five products currently in the ERMA registration process, including a trio of fungicides.

Possibly first through will be Galmano, a fluquinconazole seed treatment applied at a litre of active per tonne of seed.

Fluquinconazole will be familiar to readers of European cropping publications.

It is sold there as Jockey, applied at 4.5 litres/t to combat take-all.

Trials in New Zealand on take-all proved inconclusive, hence the lower rate which still gives excellent early season rust protection, says Bayer.

Mogul is a foliar triazole plus strobilurin fungicide formulation of prothiaconazole (as in Proline) and fluoxastrobin for use in wheat, barley and herbage seed.

‘It deals with all the key diseases extremely well,’ Bayer’s Neil Waddingham told Rural News at a field day to showcase the new products earlier this month.

‘It is a ready made formulation you can just pick up and get going with.’

Falcon completes the fungicide trio, a new mix of triazoles targeting rust, mildew and fusarium in wheat and barley.

Bayer’s other two ERMA applications are for herbicides: Firebird – a slight variation on UK pre-em product Liberator for use in wheat and barley – and Othello, a post-em sulphonyl-urea for use in wheat.

‘If it gets approval it will probably be the most broad spectrum herbicide in New Zealand,’ says Waddingham.