United Kingdom Arable Horizons sees crops to cope with climate extremes Customer Insights 17.12.2019 Farming can play a key role in more effective water management, whilst new tools could help to better cope with weather extremes Water is likely to have the biggest impact on agriculture as an effect of the changing climate. Helping growers and agronomists to manage issues of both too much and too little water is the primary objective of Syngenta’s $2 billion investment in R&D to find sustainable agriculture solutions. Speaking at the Farmers Weekly Arable Horizons Building resilience into on-farm water management, sponsored by Syngenta, the company’s UK Technical Manager, Dave King, announced the initiative will look to develop two new breakthrough technologies a year specifically targeted at mitigating the effects of climate change.
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United Kingdom
Arable Horizons sees crops to cope with climate extremesCustomer Insights17.12.2019
Farming can play a key role in more effective water management, whilst new tools could help tobetter cope with weather extremes
Water is likely to have the biggest impact on agriculture as an effect of the changingclimate. Helping growers and agronomists to manage issues of both too much and toolittle water is the primary objective of Syngenta’s $2 billion investment in R&D to findsustainable agriculture solutions.
Speaking at the Farmers Weekly Arable Horizons Building resilience into on-farm water management,sponsored by Syngenta, the company’s UK Technical Manager, Dave King, announced the initiativewill look to develop two new breakthrough technologies a year specifically targeted at mitigating theeffects of climate change.
“Agriculture globally is one of the biggest victims of the consequences of climate changeeffects, including floods and drought," he highlighted.
"Yet it is in the unique position of recognising that it is also part of the problem, in generatingsignificant levels of greenhouse gasses."
“At the same time, it is tasked with the challenge of continuing to feed ever increasing consumerdemand. Managing crops in the future will be a combination of greater resilience to withstand theeffects of climate extremes now, along with a longer-term commitment for agriculture and landmanagement to be a key component in the solution to reversing current trends,” he said.
Mr King highlighted research into exciting new technologies have demonstrated the capability toconsistently produce high yields, whilst building in the resilience to better cope with effects of climateextremes. The challenge is to now develop proven systems that will enable growers to integratepractices economically on-farm and within the regulatory framework.
Soil improvementOver recent seasons much of the Syngenta research has focused on the soil and whatgoes on below ground. “Soil structure has such a fundamental influence on crop healthand performance, as well as for drainage and water retention, along with locking upcarbon to reduce impacts of greenhouse gasses,” according to Dave King.
He reported initial results from a long-term Syngenta conservation agriculture initiative,in collaboration with the GWCT and NIAB, have shown reduced intensity establishmentsystems can cut greenhouse gas emissions from soils by 50%, compared to plough basedcultivations, along with a 70% reduction in fuel use and up to 50% reduction in costs.
Furthermore, the replicated field scale trials have shown an increase in earthwormnumbers as a reflection of soil health in the reduced intensity cultivations, along with anincrease in farmland birds. The comparative systems are also fully costed for farm outputand profitability.
“The research project is set to continue through a full five-year rotation on twocontrasting commercial farms, on heavy land in Leicestershire and light land in Kent.Crucially, it fully reflects the immense challenges faced by farmers and the need to reactin real-time to changing situations; this season there will need to be the same rethinkafter the inability to get crops established on the heavy land, for example.”
Arable Horizons host farmers Farmers Weekly Arable Horizons was hosted by Euston Estate, the 2500 hectare in-hand Suffolkfarming business in one of the driest parts of the UK. The farm typically receives just 50 to 55 mm ofrainfall a year.
With water such an important resource for root crops grown on the estate, farm manager, MatthewHawthorne (below), highlighted the essential role of both irrigation and drainage.
The estate has invested over £2.2m in 200 million gallons of reservoir storage capacity and thecapability to irrigate up over 2000 hectares. State of the art technology and monitoring governsextraction of water when available – which also helps to protect downstream communities fromflooding – along with making best use of resources through the season with improved leak detectionand better scheduling of inputs.
Furthermore, some 250 hectares of cover crops are sown each year, to enhance organic matter levelson the breckland sand soils and better retain water and nutrients.
Plant manipulationAlong with improving soil structure, comes the ability to encourage and enhance rootsystems that will drive crop health and plant performance, advocates Dave King.
“Plants with stronger rooting are clearly better able to cope with managing waterextremes - be that scavenging for moisture and nutrients to deal with the extremedrought of summer 2018, or to stay standing after the deluge of rain in June 2019."
“The challenge for growers is that when you sow the crop, you don’t know if it is going tobe a 2018 or 2019 season; we need to develop systems that will cope with bothextremes.”
With stronger rooting hybrid barley, for example, in over 60 reference yield trials acrossfour seasons, with a Jan to June rainfall variation from 184 mm to over 500 mm, itdelivered consistently higher yields every season, from 0.6 t/ha to 1.1 t/ha, compared toconventional barley varieties.
“The successful development of hybrid wheat could be one of the breakthroughtechnologies that will enable growers to better manage climate extremes,” predicted MrKing.
He also highlighted agronomic advances that are geared to managing crops to performmore consistently through challenges of climate extremes. With sedaxane seed treatment,for example, the benefit of encouraging early vigour to get crops out of the ground hasbeen invaluable in this season’s difficult conditions, where drilling has been possible.
“Increasingly new crop protection technologies are looking to do more than controldisease per se,” he advocated. “We are investigating physiological traits that give thecapability to regulate genes that are associated with stress during the plant’s growth. Wecan seek to dial down the expression of undesirable genetic traits that are associated withstress related issues, such as drought, and enhance the good genes, such as proteingeneration in milling wheat, for example.”
To further manage drought tolerance, which has historically had a far greater impact oncrop yields than excess water, targeted agronomy can maximise photosynthesis, withoutincreasing evapotranspiration that will exacerbate issues of moisture deficit.
“Bigger leaves typically result in greater water loss,” he pointed out.
“But we have identified that the fungicide, Solatenol, has a beneficial physiological effectin regulating stomatal opening. In the field we see untreated leaves wither and die indrought stress conditions, whilst the treated flag leaf can stay open and green for longerto capture energy for the plant.”
Aiming to increase crop plant resilience to a range of environmental pressures fromchanging climate will be another element to agronomy decisions on how to best useexisting and new agronomics, alongside a suite of other integrated tools.
Digital future With the challenges of climate extremes further adding to the existing complexities of farm and cropmanagement, developments in digital technology will be vital for proactive decision making. “Wedon’t want to be just reacting to situations, but need to build in the resilience that we can rely onthrough the season,” advised Dave King.
The huge investment in research is generating an immense amount of data and information that hasreally valuable application for planning and every day decisions on farm, he believed. Digitalplatforms will provide the mechanism and capability to deliver decision making support in real timeand directly linked to precision application.
“Years of integrated trials at Syngenta Innovation Centres is revealing the implications of cultivationsand establishment techniques on blackgrass populations in different seasons and with widely varyingseed dormancy, for example.
“The power of digital technology gives growers the capability to adapt their actions basedon real-life experience of what has happened in previous seasons with a similar scenario,"he advocated.
”When you then build in elements such as a variable seed rate calculator tailored to soil moistureholding capacity, for example, it becomes possible to fully utilise the agronomic capability of seeds,crop protection and new biocontrols.
“It will give the ability to consistently produce crops better able to cope with the extremesof climate change, as well as the tools to effectively integrate practical and economicsystems that can reach carbon neutral goals in the future.”
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