It’s not often you get the perfect demonstration of the difference a well-timed fungicide spray can make.
But for peanut grower Rod Grant, accidentally missing a strip when spraying convinced him his investment in MIRAVIS Duo fungicide from Syngenta was worth every cent.
Rod, of Steffensen & Sons, grows around 60ha of dryland peanuts, mostly Kairi variety, in the South Burnett region of Queensland.
Planting is normally in late October-November but last season the crop wasn’t planted until December 3 due to late rains and like most peanut growers, Rod tackles leaf spots, rust and net blotch each season.
“We sprayed MIRAVIS Duo at 500 mL/ha in a high-water rate in late February, about 12 weeks after planting,” Rod says.
“Apparently, I missed a strip. About six weeks later I sent photos to Neil [Bauer] from Syngenta,” he explains.
“The rows which weren’t sprayed with MIRAVIS Duo were all brown, those which had received the spray were still green.
“At cut out time we got no nuts from those unsprayed rows. We lost the nuts because the plants had no peg strength.”
Rod says he heard about MIRAVIS Duo fungicide at a shed day run by Muirs in Kingaroy, in early spring the year before.
“Neil really talked up it up, about how good it was, and it definitely proved to be as good as he said,” Rod agrees.
MIRAVIS Duo fungicide sets a new standard in disease control in peanuts and is registered for control of early leaf spot ( Mycosphaerella arachidis ), late leaf spot ( Mycosphaerella berkeleyi ) and net blotch ( Didymella arachidicola ) as well as suppression of rust ( Puccinia arachidis ).
Neil, who is Syngenta area sales manager, says MIRAVIS Duo fungicide is a good fit for the peanut industry, bringing a new active ingredient and enabling growers to stretch spray intervals out to 21 days.
“Diseases such as leaf spot and rust set in with heavy dews and showery conditions,” Neil says.
“The past season was pretty extreme in terms of disease pressure and it’s good to know you’ve got a product with long residual activity,” he says.
“That makes MIRAVIS Duo a key tool for peanut growers and an excellent addition to resistance management strategies.
“Better green leaf area correlates directly with increased crop yield. Infected crops have premature leaf drop and weak pegs which break during pulling and thrashing, leading to yield loss.”
MIRAVIS Duo fungicide should be used as part of a preventative disease strategy.
Optimal timing is from pre-row closure to pegging, to protect the developing crop over the flowering and pegging period and it can provide up to 28 days of residual control.
Rod says MIRAVIS Duo fungicide has replaced other fungicides with a shorter 7-to-14-day spray interval in his spray program.
He found one spray of MIRAVIS Duo fungicide extremely effective, even when the disease pressure was high in the surrounding region.
“Disease pressure was really high last season, we kept getting south-easterlies and fog that kept things wet,” Rod adds.
“Initially I thought MIRAVIS Duo was quite expensive, but that one spray makes a hell of a difference,” he says.
“I know people who sprayed a cheaper product up to three times and it still wasn’t working.
“Only having to do one spray definitely saves us money, not only in chemical costs, but also in time on the tractor.
“We’d normally cut out 20 weeks after planting, but the weather conditions meant it was more like 23 weeks. So that was about eight weeks after spraying MIRAVIS Duo and the plants were still green.
“Normally we wouldn’t be able to keep the plants green for that long. Other growers even remarked how green the plants stayed.
“MIRAVIS Duo will definitely be in our program again next season.”
