News Sugar beets
Lots of oversowing sugar beets due to crust formation
In the past week, a considerable area was sown in the sugar beet due to crust formation. Cosun expects that acreage will increase in the coming days. Moreover, the aphid is also active again in the sugar beets.
It is mainly the northern part of the Netherlands and parts of the province of Flevoland where growers are forced to oversow. The large amounts of precipitation in early April, followed by poor weather, resulted in crusting, causing many problems in emergence. Until last Monday, a total of 1.656 hectares have already been sown over this growing season, of which approximately 1.000 hectares are in the northern clay areas as a result of crust formation.
Hectares oversowing is still increasing
The number of hectares overseeded is expected to increase this week, reports Arno Huijsmans, director of agricultural affairs at Cosun Beet Company. "There are still plots where the grower is not sure whether overseeding is actually necessary. For example, growers ordered seed last Monday and Tuesday." This makes the 2022 season the highest overseeding since 2015, when there were also many emergence problems due to crust formation. In that year, a total of 2.359 hectares were sown. In recent years, the limit of 1.000 hectares has not been exceeded. Growers did not have to worry about the availability of seed. Huijsmans indicates that with the exception of a few varieties, sufficient seed is still available.
On average sown 1 week earlier
Despite the fact that the last hectares are sown over 98% of the sugar beet area sown. This means that the average sowing date is April 1. That is a week earlier than the 5-year average, which is due to early sowing in mid-March. These earlier sown beets show high plant numbers and generally look very good. However, the first aphid can be found in the fields. The damage threshold of green aphids has been exceeded on a number of beet plots in the southwest and southeast of the country. These exceedances are mainly found on the plots that are in the four-leaf stage.
Jesse Torringa
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