Winter barley needs care

Press, 4 June 1982, Page 17

Winter barley needs care

Any New Zealand farmer seeking to grow w’inter barley without increasing his normal workload to grow spring barley is going to have problems, according to an agronomist who is very experienced with growing barley over winter, Mr Alan Park, of Wrightson NMA ; Ltd. Lincoln. “There' is a lot of talk about .at the moment on winter barley and I am concerned that people will think they can sow winter barley with the same amount ol care as spring barley, but there are far greater problems with winter barley and the crop also increases the potential for problems in nearby spring barley,” Mr Park said this week...

The extra problems with winter barley in New Zealand that Mr Park has identified in four years of research and growing of the crop, include more disease, wind damage and bird damage. And .Mr Park says that these problems will not be overcome simply by growing a winter barley variety from the United Kingdom, where half of all barley grown is sowed in autumn.

This is because the U.K. winter barley varieties tend to bring extra problems not normally encountered in New Zealand and also that the Wrightson research has shown that our spring-sown varieties are capable of outperforming most of the U.K. winter barleys, when both types are grown in the winter here.

Consequently, even after four years of research. Mr Park is not recommending a headlong rush into winter barleys for New’ Zealand, although he knows they would make for much better utilisation of harvesting equipment by bringing the barley harvest substantially in advance of the wheat harvest.

“Ironically, while -there is quite a bit of talk around about the potential of winter barleys for New Zealand; Wrightson is scaling down its

research effort into them." said Mr Park. The company has invested four years of research into many different types of winter barley and growing our spring barleys over the winter. “If someone thought he was going to grow winter barley with the same amount of effort he was putting into his spring barley, I would advise that he would get a better return from putting more effort into his spring barley," said Mr Park. He said Ark Royal. Hassan and Koru (to be commercially released soon) had outyielded the U.K. winter barley varieties when grown through the winter in the Wrightson trials. The U.K. barleys had a tendency to lose their heads in high winds, such as the Canterbury nor’westers, but

there are some exceptions to this. At the Kimihia research station. Lincoln, bird damage was also a problem and Mr Park recommends many different types of control methods, not just a reliance on one method. This means that the disease-resistant varieties can provide the green bridge for much greater attacks than normal on the susceptible varieties. Mr Park says winter barley probably .lias a place in New Zealand arable farming; but it needs a great deal of care, and it will need to fit in with sheep management. If farmers are interested in winter barley, Mr Park says he is still collecting information and that Wrighlson NMA would respond to any discerned movement towards, winter barley. :