Caramba fungicide approved just in time

I was out touring winter wheat fields around Watrous and Govan yesterday, calf-deep in muck and getting soaked in the never-ending rain. I saw a lot of sprayer tracks but not as many seeding tracks as I would have liked (and I'm sure farmers would like even more). There were pockets of crop growing or seeded and the winter wheat looks amazing - for now. All this water has got farmers talking about leaf disease and that horrible disease, fusarium head blight.

Farmers now have one more option to add to their tool box in the fight against leaf disease and FHB. BASF's Caramba fungicide received registration today and could make a lot of cereal growers very happy this year given the wet, wet, wet conditions farmers are facing. BASF says the product not only decreases the incidence of fusarium head blight, but it also decreases the resulting level of DON mycotoxin in cereals. The active ingredient, metconazole, controls major leaf diseases of wheat, oat and barley as well as fusarium, protecting yield and quality.

“Most fungicides control either fusarium or leaf diseases, this is the first product to provide a high level of both,” says Wayne Barton, marketing manager, fungicides, for BASF. Caramba is to be sprayed at flowering, a little later than some growers might be used to if they're typically going after leaf diseases. “It's a bit later than most growers are used to, and it's small application window,” Barton says. He says that if farmers plan to use Caramba, the narrow application window will require a little extra planning to ensure their application system (aerial or otherwise) is in place ahead of time.

Barton expects that most farmers will still choose to spray their wheat once, maybe twice. In that case, Caramba could become the first choice when fusarium head blight is the main concern, he says. “Most growers will choose one option: add a fungicide with their herbicide application early and control leaf disease; go in at the flag leaf stage and protect the flag and penultimate leaves with something like Headline; or choose Caramba and wait for flowering,” he says. Caramba does provide a high level of protection from leaf diseases when applied at heading, Barton adds, so it's not entirely an either/or scenario — it's simply a choice of controlling the biggest concern.

This year, it might be both.