Grain Central

RURAL communities across Victoria are counting the cost of recent bushfires as emergency services and volunteers continue to fight 14 blazes across the state.

The larger bushfires are in the state’s east, where tracts of grazing country and native forest in mostly hilly and mountainous terrain are still burning, with the Longwood and Walwa fires being the largest.

In cropping country, the Grass Flat fire near Natimuk in the Wimmera has burnt roughly 8350ha, and in the Mallee, the fire south of Underbool has also impacted a considerable area.

Analysis of the samples was coordinated by Curtin University-based Fran Lopez-Ruiz, project lead for the Australian Fungicide Resistance Extension Network.

Dr Lopez-Ruiz agrees the best approach is for growers to shift to newer barley cultivars with improved genetic resistance to NFNB, and to adopt agronomic disease-management practices including rolling or grazing barley stubble and planting non-barley crop rotations.

Growers wanting to limit the chances of fungicide resistance developing can follow AFREN’s Fungicide Resistance Five principles: