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Rest crop in the spotlight: winter rapeseed
In the series 'Rest crop highlighted' Martijn van Overveld takes you through the advantages of winter rapeseed. He tells you that you can also profit from the special advantages of this rest crop in crop plans with sugar beets, such as breaking the wireworm population in the soil.
In the Netherlands, we mainly grow rapeseed in the northeast, but as a rest crop it now also fits very well in the whole of the Netherlands. Nematode multiplication and storage can be prevented and the cultivation has several unique advantages, as Martijn van Overveld explains in the video.
Preventing wireworms
Due to the disappearance of pesticides, he sees harmful insects such as wireworms increasing in many plots. "That can cause enormous economic damage in many important crops such as potatoes. It is therefore important to make the right choices in the construction plan, to stop the build-up of wireworms in the soil where possible. And that fits in rapeseed perfect in."
The benefits of rapeseed
Genetic progress in oilseed rape has been remarkable, with sustainable solutions for growers including tolerance to phoma and yellows virus (TuYV), reduced risk of seed loss due to pod burst, improved autumn growth and more efficient nitrogen use.
Rapeseed also offers advantages in the crop rotation plan: it stops the build-up of wireworms, leaves behind a lot of organic matter and a good soil structure, ensures crop rotation and expansion, makes a positive contribution to the image and biodiversity and is harvested early.
In addition, rapeseed is now also suitable for rotation with sugar beet, thanks to BCA-resistant beet varieties and green manures such as fodder radish or yellow mustard with BCA-1 resistance, which means that harmful nematodes are kept well under control with a crop rotation of at least 1 in 4.
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