Fungicide resistance is fast becoming as dangerous a threat to Australian
agriculture as herbicide resistance.
There's plenty of mildew here.
and plenty resistance.
Here in the high rainfall environment of northern Tasmania
fungicide resistance is high and the race is on to address this issue for the
benefits of the entire grains industry.
It is paramount for us to be able to
establish successful interactions and we both the industry and the researchers in
order to push the fungicide resistance issue farther and be able to actually
deal with this this problem in the short in the very short term.
Doctor Fran Lopez-Ruiz is fungicide resistance group leader at the Centre for Crop and
Disease Management. A national research centre leading the way in crop disease
research and fungicide management strategies. Supported by Western
Australia's Curtin University and with investment from GRDC the centre has been
documenting cases of fungicide resistance across the country since 2014.
Basically we've caught an important case of fungus resistance in Western Australia
where it relates to Net Type Net Blotch and a Spot Type Net Blotch in the south of Western Australia.
We've caught widespread barley powdery mildew resistance and this is in
both cases the Blotches and Powdery Mildew is a resistance to DMI fungicides.
Fungicide resistance is also a significant issue nationwide.
You also have other cases of fungicide resistances like the one that we have
investigated in the last couple of days here in Tasmania so which is a
Strobilurns resistance in wheat Powdery mildew. So pretty much the resistance here is quite high.
And the compound pretty much has gone for the control of wheat Powdery mildew.
Not every case of resistance is a field failure but where there is
fungicide sensitivity, it's now regarded as a warning sign.
For Septoria tritici probably we are on the on the verge of actually calling it the field failure
but for the other cases the blotches and wheat Powdery mildew, barley Powdery mildew
there is a real field failure. So the compound is not able to control anymore.
At the annual hyper yielding cereals project field day Fran encouraged cereal
growers to implement an integrated disease management strategy.
So fungicide is just one of the components of this integrated management strategy. In my view genetic
resistance is the most important component. We have to combine as many
tools as possible. So using varieties with high levels of
resistance to the different diseases sometimes that's actually quite
difficult to achieve but trying to achieve that is paramount.
Good rotations of our crops or having actually decent rotations where we've
got different crops built as part of this strategy that's going to create a
very dynamic environment and the disease is going to have a very hard in order to
adapt to this changing environment.
The strategic use of fungicides is also important to reduce the risk of pathogens developing resistance
and prolong the lifespan of the limited chemistry that's available.
So you use obviously the same chemical season after season we are just basically asking for
troubles here so we need to use different strategies here. We need to
rotate the chemicals within the different mode of actions that we've got
available. We have to alternate the different mode of actions we have to mix
the different mode of actions together we have to create a very dynamic
environment from the chemical point of view.
When it comes to making management
decisions, growers need not think they're alone in addressing fungicide resistance.
The Centre for Crop and Disease Management receives more than 1,000 crop
samples per year from the grains industry and growers are encouraged to
get in touch if they suspect their fungicides are ineffective.
Something that is actually quite important for us is is to be able to provide feedback to those
that provide us samples you can at the end of the day this is the whole point
of the story it's just trying to help the industry to make better decisions
right to actually you know be able to deploy the right chemical in the at the
right spot in those cases where there is fungicide resistance reported.