This agronomy researcher is testing the timing and efficacy of an application of fungicide or nutrients on hail-damaged crops.

When you have a crop that’s been seriously damaged by hail, conventional wisdom says there’s no way back. If you have hail insurance, you’ll be filing a claim. If you don’t, you’re out of luck.

Even so, growers might have heard something different through the agronomic grapevine: hailed-out crops brought back from the brink by a timely application of a fungicide or crop nutrients. Ken Coles thinks there may be reasons for it to work, at least partially.

“If you’ve got damaged tissue, there’s a chance for infection,” said Coles, General Manager with Farming Smarter, an independent applied research organization based in southern Alberta. “The theory is that a fungicide could potentially protect that damaged tissue so it doesn’t get worse through infection. There are growth-regulating properties in fungicides as well.”

Given the high stakes – the value of the crop and the cost of such applications – Coles wanted to study these claims. In 2015, with funding from Alberta Pulse Growers and others, he began a four-year project to investigate whether these so-called recovery products lived up to their billing.

Device simulates hail on demand

In his research, Coles uses an ingenious invention – a round-linked dog chain with rotating drums mounted on the front-end loader of a tractor – to simulate the effects of hail. First, he uses the device to beat-up plots planted with pulses, cereals and oilseed crops at different times in the growing season. Then, he applies crop nutrients or fungicide and observes the effect of these inputs. Field peas are a major focus of this research product.

“In 2016 and 2017, we noticed that of all the crops, peas are the most susceptible to hail damage,” Coles said. “Peas just have really soft tissue.”

Coles reports that his research so far indicates yield loss due to hail is correlated to the stage of the crop at the time of the hail damage. Early damage had the lowest impact on yield because crops have time to bounce back.

With one year of field work left, Coles hesitates to issue firm recommendations. To this point, however, it appears that broad-based claims of miraculous crop recovery don’t hold water. Coles has seen a slight improvement with early or mid-season applications of nutrients and fungicide. These same applications made later in the season, though, were more likely to add stress to crops, or encourage weed growth. In effect, they could do more harm than good.

The project’s final year of research in 2018 will help Coles dig deeper into questions around applying fungicides and nutrients to hail-damaged crops.

“It looks like both the early- and mid-season timing give a very slight result,” Coles said, “but quantitatively, is it enough to pay for? I don’t think so at this point, but that’s what this last season of data will help us discover.”