Next season, SA farmers will have access to a new durum wheat variety that offers as a higher yielding and improved grain size replacement to other commercial durum varieties.
DBA Spes, was officially released by the University of Adelaide at the Southern Australia Growers Association crop walk earlier this month and its benefits were explained further by the University of Adelaide’s Stuart Hentschke at the Hart field day.
For the past two years National Variety Trial data found Spes maintained a higher relative yield and had a slightly superior disease resistance package when compared to other commercial durum varieties, including DBA Aurora that was released in 2014.
Mr Hentschke said Spes also had improved resistance to rust when compared with Aurora too.
“Spes has a tolerance to a range of grass and broad leaf herbicides as well,” he said.
“It has also proven to have acceptable protein average but as a result of its high yielding nature, a sufficient nitrogen management strategy will need to be in place by growers to ensure the optimum protein levels can be maintained sufficiently.”
In the multiple NVT trials, Spes delivered an improved gain size when compared with Saintly and Hyperno, as well as showing early vigour and weed competitiveness.
“It also had comparable screening results to Aurora across the southern NVT trials in 2016 and 2017, with screenings from all 12 sites at 2.7 per cent while Aurora had 3.2pc,” Mr Hentschke said.
Spes had a similar sowing time to other durum varieties but it was suited to an early May sowing and late May to early June, but sowing after June was not recommended because it could cause increased screening levels.
Mr Hentschke said the variety could help to alleviate some of the risks associated with growing durum and also improve its position within the farming system rotation.
An on-going evaluation of the variety will continue into the 2019 season and limited seed with be available in time for the 2019 sowing.
But although Spes could be a suitable replacement for SA growers who were growing Saintly and Hyperno, Mr Hentschke said Aurora was still the dominate variety grown in SA and Vic because it consistently showed yield potential that was comparable or superior to the highest yielding commercial durum varieties.
“Compared to results from Hyperno, Saintly and WID802 in the SA region, Aurora still maintains a higher relative yield,” he said.
“The largest yield I have seen was 8.8 tonne a hectare with 14.9pc protein.”
