Flavell’s Apples, at Lenswood in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia, utilised a new fungicide option from a different chemical group for the control of black spot this season.
Phillip Flavell said the DuPont™ Fontelis® fungicide was introduced because it was in a different grouping and they were keen to change the chemistry as often as they could.
“It’s well proven. It doesn’t matter if it’s a herbicide or anything else, we need to be changing chemical, just not relying on one all the time,” Mr Flavell said.
He said they had issues during the 2011–12 season with black spot control and felt it was time to try something new.
“That year we had a huge black spot problem, we had a wet spring and obviously we should have put another spray on somewhere, which we didn’t, and we got caught out.
“I think it’s as simple as that, missing one spray you should have put on. It’s very hard to control.”
Mr Flavell said they used Fontelis in a dry year and didn’t have any issues with black spot, but would be keen to see its performance in a wetter season.
“With the help of a drier spring and a fairly close program this last 12 months, there was very little black spot around.”
Fontelis is designed to provide protection for up to 10 days on apple black spot and up to 21 days for powdery mildew.
It is designed as a preventative fungicide option and has the advantage of causing minimal impact to key beneficial insects and rainfastness within just one hour of application.
Mr Flavell said they farm 40 ha of orchard split between apples and cherries, and also run an on-farm packing shed.
He said their location, on the top of the Adelaide Hills, meant they were quite exposed to the weather and could sometimes have issues with both rain and wind.
This limited the number of ideal spray application days in a season and made attributes such as product compatibility and rainfastness very important.
“We’ve usually got a three, four or five tank mix with chemicals and fertiliser as well,” Mr Flavell said.
“It’s got to tank mix. If it had to go out on its own as a fungicide it probably wouldn’t get off the ground.
“I don’t enjoy driving up and down rows every day of the week, so we don’t want to be doing it all the time.”
“We are into all the mainstream varieties. Pink Lady™ and Rosie Glow™ make up a fairly big percentage of our apple operation these days and we are planting quite a few Kanzi™, a new variety which we hope will take off. It shows a lot of promise.”
Mr Flavell said the main aim of the orchard is to produce fruit of a very high quality, and products such as Fontelis could help to achieve this aim.
For more information visit www.fontelis.com.au
© Du Pont (Australia) Pty Ltd. DuPont™, Fontelis® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Du Pont (Australia) Pty Ltd.
This article is in Tree Fruit September 2013
