KATANA wheat has proven to be a winner for the second consecutive year in the Brown's Well Crop Competition.
One of the few crop competitions left in the state, the Brown’s Well event has been running for decades.
This year 80 farmers and agronomists took part, travelling 187 kilometres on Tuesday last week to inspect crops. Attendees judged six different wheat crops at sites including Paruna, Alawoona, Meribah and Peebinga.
Highlighting the tough season, the average growing season rainfall ranged from 140 millimetres to 169mm. But, the estimated water use efficiency on the crops highlighted the benefits of modern farming techniques.
Researchers French and Schultz’s set an optimal water use efficiency benchmark of 20 kilograms of grain a hectare with each mm of water received. But, showing the water use efficiency being achieved in the Mallee, the top two crops in this year’s competition had estimated WUE of 23kg/ha/mm.
Attendees had the chance to judge the crops, which were scored out of 100, based on aspects such as estimated yield and agronomic achievement.
Last year the Lehmann family, Peebinga, won with Katana, and this year Lachlan Singh, who farms with his wife Bonnie and parents Kev and Helen at Alawoona, took out the title with the same variety.
The Singh family scored 87.65 points, with an estimated yield of 2.41 tonnes a hectare.
Katana is an Australian Grain Technologies wheat bred to combine the quality characteristics of Kukri with the high grain yield potential of Tammin.
It produces relatively stable yields, has early to mid season maturity, good grain size and test weights, powdery mildew resistance and is a AH quality classification.
The Singhs’ winning crop was sown on May 9, on what had been a medic pasture, bucking the trend for earlier-sown crops being the better performers.
“It was actually getting towards the end of sowing, it was the second to last paddock we put in,” Lachlan said.
It was sown with the Singhs’ base fertiliser rate of 60kg of 19:16:06 sulphate of ammonia and 20kg of urea. Another 40kg of urea was added in-crop.
The winning crop also received two litres of a trace element mix, a broadleaf spray, with some fungicide, and it was sprayed for Russian wheat aphids after a few were spotted in-crop.
“Luckily mice haven’t been an issue for us, because we have a crop/pasture rotation, the sheep help to clean up any spilled grain in the stubbles,” Lachlan said.
The Singhs have been growing Katana for the past five years, and also sow Scepter and Shield wheat, Westminster and Commander barley, and field peas and vetch.
“For the year-to-date, we’ve received 236mm of rainfall, with 150mm in the growing season,” Lachlan said. “It’s light on, our usual total for this time of year would be 280-300mm. We had 86mm fall in February, which helped with the sub-soil moisture.”
August rainfall was good at 40mm, but September was extremely tight at only 6mm.
“I’m surprised how well the crops have held on, but I believe it’s because we had that summer rain, that’s what got us through,” Lachlan said.
“There’s nothing I would have done differently, except order more rain, but even with the very dry September, I’m still happy with the crops we’ve got.”
