Leonidas Rempelos, Abujawad M. Almuayrifi, Marcin Baranski, Catherine Tetard-Jones, Mick Eyre, Peter Shotton, Ismail Cakmak, Levent Ozturk, Julia Cooper, Nikolaos Volakakis, Christoph Schmidt, Enas Sufar, Juan Wang, Andrew Wilkinson, Eduardo A. S. Rosa, Bingqiang Zhao, Terry J. Rose, Carlo Leifert, Paul Bilsborrow

Agricultural intensification over the last 40 years has increased cereal yields, but there is very limited information on the effects of intensification practices (e.g. non-diverse rotations, mineral NPK fertiliser and pesticides) on crop health and quality. Results from the study reported here suggest that the use of mineral NPK fertilisers reduces phenolic acid and flavonoid concentrations in leaves, and increases the susceptibility of wheat to lodging and powdery mildew, when compared to composted FYM inputs. In contrast, the use of herbicides, fungicides and growth regulators reduces lodging and foliar disease severity, but had no effect on phenolic acid and flavonoid concentrations. The use of composted FYM inputs also resulted in a significant grain yield reduction and not substantially reduced the severity of opportunistic pathogens such as Septoria, which remain a major yield limiting factor unless fungicides are used and/or more Septoria resistant varieties become available.