Last updated 24 February 2025. Paul McIntosh, Pulse Australia and WeedSmart.
Last week was another large travel week in NSW, looking at Mungs and various Mungbean trials done for achieving more consistent yields. Happy to have more Queensland trial work done also.
As you can see by the photo, our southern farmer mates can grow good mungs.
Part of the reason for the trip south was to ensure that everyone from agronomists, farm owners and the actual farm staff or contractors who apply our different pesticides, get it right. By getting it right, I mean getting the registered or permitted products applied on time at the correct rate.
Our large Mungbean export industry did have issues with the application of Haloxyfop too late in the mungs' growth stage for grass control in our clean green Mungbean crops.
I tell everyone to control their weeds before they set seed, however pushing the Haloxyfop application into that budding or early flowering stage is much too late for these Group 1 fops and dims herbicides.
Same for insecticides. They certainly need to be registered or at the very least an active non-expired permit and I am very happy to have another phone call to check these facts.
It is certainly not a guessing game with these pesticides and pushing the envelope is not a good policy.
Aussie clean green Mungbeans have a good reputation overseas and that is why our price per tonne is at a good, solid and profitable level. It is much better policy to give me a call to check, rather than to find out later that an incorrect pesticide application has already taken place. Then it gets so much harder to market that crop with segregation and potential marketing by sample with the added expense and time delay, in getting the crop tested by very sensitive equipment to an array of pesticides.
Basic principle is that if an overseas country does not have that pesticide product registered in their homeland, then the MRL level is 0.00 mg per kg (that mean NIL detection) or whatever that country decides. It can even be used as an artificial trade barrier by those importing countries. Surprise, surprise, a lot of our MRL’s and registered rates in Australia are generally a lot higher than many of our overseas customers.
So we need to adopt the safety first policy for our pesticide selection. Phrases like, “it should be okay to apply" or, “I think it is okay from memory," or worst of the lot is, "yeah reckon it will be right," need to be banned in these sorts of pesticide decisions. Another tip is that these MRL restrictions or checks are only going to get more intense as the years go on, across a range of our export crops and not just our humble Mungbean.
Will keep travelling around our large geographical regions growing Mungs in 2025, from Griffth to the Burdekin and organising rain for those that need it.
That’s all folks.
Paul McIntosh in a good crop of Opal Mungs in central NSW.