T1 Cereal Focus: A key timing for delivering effective disease control in the season ahead…

With more forward, advanced crops this year, many in prime condition, growers face key disease control decisions heading into the main spring period.

Assessing the yield potential of each field will help plan cost input spend appropriately. The use of cost-effective partner products for the T1 timing can reduce input costs.

Key Considerations:

For normal and higher yield potential crops coming into spring, cost-effective triazoles can be ideal ‘partner products’ for newer chemistry, to optimise both disease control and overall input costs at T1.

• Carefully assess each crop ahead of T1 to tailor sprays accordingly.
• Consider T1 upgrades from single active triazoles to more powerful prothioconazole-based co-forms for added disease control at little extra cost.
• Use T1 as an opportunity to vary strategy and input spend across fields, based on soil and crop conditions and yield potential, to improve overall margins.
• Consider multi-sites e.g. folpet at T1 as an important part of the overall disease control programme and to protect other chemistry for resistance management.
• Ensuring a robust programme at T1 is crucial for season-long control in wheat (and Brown rust control in barley, especially hybrids).
• Partnering tebuconazole or other triazoles with new chemistry can be a good way to balance spend and achieve effective Yellow rust control.
• Clayton has multiple frontline product options for growers to choose from which will deliver cost-effective disease control, targeting Septoria, Yellow rust and Brown rust as well as other diseases and also provide excellent partners for other chemistry.

Cost-Effective T1 Performance

Clayton trials research carried out by Velcourt in 2024 to investigate T1 fungicide options proved that cost-effective, co-formulated generic options can deliver comparable yield responses to industry standard SDHI options.

The best performing treatment in the trial was…

Clayton Tendril (160 g/L prothioconazole + 300 g/L spiroxamine) tank mixed with Clayton Canyon (500 g/L folpet).

With significant cost reductions over recent years, generic options also offer excellent value for money.

Septoria is usually the main focus at T1

With disease pressure growing in some crops, it’s important to keep Septoria in check.

Any rainfall showers can increase disease pressure through April, and inoculum spread can quickly accelerate with rising temperatures and rapid crop growth and development in this period, especially in earlier sown crops, more susceptible varieties or areas where disease risk is higher.

Key consideration: Folpet offers strong protection against Septoria and is a useful, cost-effective option to consider alongside traditional triazole co-formulations or new chemistry.

Rusts has also been a key focus at T1 in recent seasons

With periods of milder temperatures this winter conducive to the survival of rust pustules on leaves, the infective footpeg of the disease may not have been significantly reduced, so disease could re-infect crops earlier and more rapidly, increasing disease pressure, so high vigilance is key.

Yellow rust protection at T1 should be a serious consideration for low resistance scoring varieties with the RL score 5 or below. Note: revisions to the 2026 AHDB Recommended List due to the widely reported breakdown in resistance of the Yr15 gene.