Open Day 2016
Wheat theme
Wheat Varieties and time of sowing
Andrew Lockley, Landmark
A range of newly released wheat varieties, experimental lines and industry standards at two times of sowing to assess the impact of variety and sowing time on performance. The trial includes five dual purpose wheats with three different grazing strategies applied and four new soft wheat varieties compared to Rosella and Spitfire. Next to the variety trial is a trial looking at the impact of different rates and combinations of common nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus fertilisers to determine the impact on crop performance. The treatments have been applied over wheat, barley, canola, faba beans and Lucerne clover pasture.
New wheat varieties from AGT
James Whiteley, AGT
AGT is the largest wheat breeding company in Australia with a national program delivering high performance varieties across a range of environments and growing regions. The program has a suite of APW, AH and APH varieties suitable for short, medium and long season conditions. Recently released AGT varieties include Beckom, Condo, Cutlass, Kiora, Sunlamb and Scepter which are in commercial production and performing well in southern and central NSW. Of particular interest this year is the release of a new variety – Coolah. Coolah is a higher yielding alternative to Gregory, with improved lodging tolerance, so having a fit for late April into May sowing and providing an improved profit over Gregory.
Crop Health - Biosecurity and Pest Management
Geoff Minchin, Riverina LLS
New and emerging biosecurity threats to grain production. This presentation will include identification and management of Russian wheat aphid. Strategies to reduce the spread of diseases like rust and Sclerotinia and discussion of tools to manage emerging resistance. Finally, a look at identification and management emerging pests like common white snail and conical snail. Riverina LLS has funding available to assist farmers to develop and implement farm biosecurity planning to manage pest, weed and disease incursion.
Dow Seeds Wheat Breeding Program
Allan Rattey, Dow Seeds
Dow Seeds has located its Southern wheat breeding hub for Australia at TAIC. The Dow Seeds wheat breeding program aims to deliver new varieties that are high yielding, with strong, robust disease resistance and premium grain quality. Dow Seeds aims to also have varieties that offer value added components to provide maximum flexibility for farmers, such as elevated Pre-Harvesting Sprouting (PHS) tolerance and winter wheat varieties offering dual functionality in grazing and grain production. This move by Dow Seeds brings with it the scope to expand in the future to include its’ advanced NexeraTM canola material and even Dow’s suite of crop protection technology.
The Effect of Management Strategies to Maintain Stubble in Contemporary Disc and Tine Cropping Systems
Tony Swan , CSIRO
GRDC funded FarmLink Research & CSIRO Stubble Initiative (CSP000174) trial “Sequences for Seeders” “Retaining stubble in SNSW is easy – you just go and buy a disc seeder. It’s what you do after that which is the tricky part”. These were the words of a one of the grower members of the FarmLink and CSIRO Stubble Initiative steering committee at the start of the project. We are currently in the third year of this four year experiment which is designed to better understand what complementary management changes (e.g. crop sequence) may be necessary to improve profitability in stubble retained systems. It will also quantify any production benefits from zero-till (disc) systems relative to no-till (tine) systems, and four years of experimental data will be used in a whole farm financial analysis to look at return on capital investment in zero-till seeding equipment. This experiment compares yield, profitability and sustainability of three different sequence systems (Conservative, Sustainable and Aggressive) in a factorial design with zero- and no-till seeding equipment (Excel single-disc with Aricks wheel vs Flexi-Coil tine with Stiletto knife-points and deep-banding/splitting boots). The sequence systems are: A. Conservative – TT canola, wheat, wheat (20 kg/ha up-front N broadcast with disc & deep-banded with tine). B. Sustainable – legume hay, TT canola, wheat, barley (20 kg/ha up-front N broadcast with disc & deep-banded with tine). C. Aggressive – RR canola, wheat, wheat (40 kg/ha up-front N broadcast with disc & deep-banded with tine)