Nematode pays Robert Law a visit

We only have about 60 ewes left to lamb out of a total of some 2,500, and fortunately we have had no problems with Schmallenberg virus, unlike on many sheep farms in an ever-increasing area of southern England. We still know precious little about the virus and how it will affect us in the future.
We have had a visit from a pest called root knot nematode. A number of patches started to appear in an early-drilled crop of Invicta wheat, which was sown in ideal conditions after oilseed rape. The plants in these areas started to go brown and die back. Samples were taken to NIAB, where the culprit was identified by NIAB entomologist Jane Thomas.
It is a pest rarely seen, and conversations with a number of agronomists around the country have left them scratching their heads. Apparently there is no means of control and we have been left wondering how it will affect our future cropping decisions on the field, as various crops are hosts to this nematode.
More worrying is that the pest has turned up in another two of our wheat crops on different farms some five miles from the original field of Invicta, which means that it could have been carried on machinery.
We have also been warned that it can be carried by the wind as well, which might explain why it has appeared in one of my neighbour’s wheat crops next to the Invicta fields. Recently, the plants in the affected areas have started to grow away with new shoots appearing on the roots but overall field yields will be significantly pegged back by this yield robber.