Who Has been Eating My Oil Seed Rape Crop

Since the day our oilseed rape crop was planted something has been eating it. The latest concern has been pollen beetle although they were easy to find during stem extension 4-5 weeks ago I believed that they never reached the threshold of 15 per plant (for good crops) as described in the recent HGCA information sheet 12. The early drilled fields and most forward quickly began to flower and were soon past the critical stage. There were a few  fields that the pigeons would not leave alone. I was in fear of the safety of our gas banger as the field were next to a busy road and a discrete lay by, an ideal place to pick up a bottle of gas and a battery. The fields in question refused to come into flower and showed a brown/yellow haze. One of my colleagues had a look and said it was the worst case of pollen beetle that he had ever seen and I have since discovered that he said under his breath  it was a right off. 



The main stem

The 'embarrassment' had a dose of insecticide  and I did not drive past for a week, choosing to go to Wymondham the long way. To my amazement  the field is now bright yellow, even the bit that the pigeons and slugs ate. Whilst the main stem has a few developing pods the lower branches have many buds forming and new flowers day by day.

We have one field in particular that suffered from slugs, rabbits, deer and pigeons, water logging, shade, frost (not necessarily in that order) that was a brown field until the beginning of April. This field as it turns out had a well timed dose of insecticide and there has been virtually no pollen beetle damage. It is interesting to read in the farmers weekly that other people are having similar problems but putting it down to hot days, cold nights, strong winds, lack of rain and the variety DK Cabernet. Farmers weekly blog.

In my view this year a  few fields were at a particular growth stage when there was several days of perfect conditions for pollen beetle to thrive. Fields that were outside this window have fared very well.

It has been a worrying month for the OSR crop  and with price highs of £380/t we want every seed we can. Despite the challenging drilling period, the cold winter, the vermin, the pollen beetle a oilseed rape crop has a impressive ability to compensate. I am a bit more confidant about the crop than I was 2 weeks ago. Now if only it would rain.



I would be supprised if this field was a right off now