Spring cropping


‘Don’t leave oilseed rape performance to chance’


A well-structured crop


canopy which results in a high number of seeds is the biggest single determinant of performance success with oilseed rape, suggests research. The number of seeds produced accounted for two-thirds of the 4.8t/ha yield variation record- ed between 150-plus crops in- volved in the fi rst three years of the Oilseed Yield Enhancement Network competition, according to an ADAS analysis. “To have a chance of getting 5t/ ha you need more than 100,000 seeds/m2


,” said ADAS head of crop


physiology Pete Berry, who spoke to growers at the Dekalb Oilseed Rape Hub, held at last autumn’s Croptec event.


“Since seed number is deter-


mined by the amount of light in- tercepted in the 2-3 weeks after


fl owering, in our experience this means a well-structured canopy with a green area index (GAI) of between 3.0 and 4.0.


Room for improvement Most oilseed rape crops are ca- pable of yielding around 9t/ha. But most leading farms and re- search trials for oilseed rape sel- dom achieve this. The average commercial farm produces even less – around 3t/ha – with little increase in over 10 years. The highest yielding 25% YEN crops also came from growers who used noticeably lower than aver- age seed rates but more fungicide applications, Dr Berry told grow- ers at the East of England Show- ground, Peterborough. “We’ve seen a clear and con- sistent association between yield and the number of days from fl ow-


ON THE VERGE OF PERFECTION


ering to desiccation too. On av- erage, an extra 11 days of seed setting and pod fi lling has accom- panied a yield difference of more than a tonne/ha.


Seasonal factors “On the nutritional side, both soil and post-harvest seed anal- ysis has highlighted a relation- ship between the highest yields and higher than normal magne- sium contents which we are in- vestigating further to establish the extent to which this link could be causal.” The vagaries of the season also


have an important infl uence on OSR performance. Long-term ADAS studies show that a dry December, warm March, dry and sunny April and cool, wet May are all associated with the high- est yields.


But Dr Berry stressed that weather factors only account for less than 40% of the variation re- corded in annual crop yields. This


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