Syngenta offer goes well during National Onion Day

The employees of Syngenta Seeds and Syngenta Crop Protection look back positively on the National Onion Day on 25 August . At no fewer than four locations, news and developments were shared with an interested public. "The National Onion Day is and remains an important knowledge event for onion growers."

"We have had a good feeling about it," says Brigitte van der Steen. "We had a good run at the different stands and the public was genuinely interested." Van der Steen is head of marketing of the seed branch of Syngenta and, together with colleagues from Crop Protection, was responsible for the design of no fewer than three different stands and a variety demo. "We had a lot of news and we deliberately spread it across the site."

Promotion on the variety list
For Syngenta Seeds, the inclusion of the Promotion variety on the national 2023 seed onion variety list was an important achievement. The special feature of this variety is its insensitivity to growing conditions, you know Syngenta onion expert Michael van Mol. "It doesn't matter where you place the Promotion, it always comes in the top 3 in terms of yield. Drought, heat or cold, the variety always does well with the kilos. With Promotion you simply get yield certainty at home. The variety can works well on all types of soil, but clay soil is his favourite. And storing until the end of March, early April is fine." Due to the persistent drought on the demo field, the Syngenta variety presentation unfortunately did not really come into its own. "But that bothered everyone," Van Mol puts into perspective.

Biostimulant in onions
A little further on, Jelle Westerlaken, crop advisor at Syngenta Crop Protection, explained the new biostimulant Quantis. "This product is intended to make the crop more resilient to stress due to drought and heat. Due to climate change, this is more topical than ever and especially here in Zeeland." Westerlaken says that the trials in seed onions have only just begun. But in potatoes, Syngenta has been active with Quantis since 2020. "Even last year we realized a plus of an average of 27% on the yield in a test group of about 8 potato growers. For seed onions and sugar beets, we first want to collect data for a few more seasons before we come up with practical advice." In the field stand, the good performances of Orondis plus Amistar were also explained. This new fungicide from Syngenta Crop Protection has already proven its worth in many onion schemes against downy mildew and other onion fungi.

Evaporate spray liquid
Finally, Syngenta presented the Remdry on the mechanization square; that is the updated version of the Heliosec, a collecting basin for spray liquid residues. "The operation of the Remdry is based on evaporation as usual, but the collector is now octagonal and therefore captures more sunlight," explains spray technology specialist Aron Bom. "As a result, the water from the liquid evaporates more effectively. The capacity has also been increased. The system can now evaporate up to 3.000 liters of residual liquid per year."

In a small test set-up, attentive visitors also saw a brand new Syngenta nozzle at work. The special thing is that the nozzles spray back and forth alternately. Work is currently underway on recognition by the Technical Assessment Committee.