Tough year tests varieties

Resources available through SARDI and the GRDC can provide valuable help when deciding what variety might provide the best bang for grower’s bucks in the upcoming season.

These include the recently-released 2019 South Australian Crop Sowing Guide and 2018 season GRDC National Variety Trial results and long term yield reporter, which are available online.

With the 2018-2019 season throwing virtually every challenge possible at croppers, there will be valuable data on what varieties still hold up even in an extreme year.

SARDI research scientist Kenton Porker said this season really put varieties to the test.

“It’s been a pretty tough year, with a late break in many districts followed by a combination of widespread drought, frost and heat,” he said.

“From the results that have been released, in situations of terminal drought the early maturity and faster developing cultivars in both wheat and barley were generally the better performers.

“There was also a lot of frost around and in many of our sowing date trials it was difficult to determine the true impact of frost, due to the dry finish. In many instances early maturity cultivars that flowered early during periods of frost have still outperformed later flowering cultivars, due to drought avoidance. There were some examples were late rain favoured later developing cultivars, however this was rare.

“By and large the early to mid maturity varieties that are well adapted to SA are continuing to do well right across the board from typical May sowing dates.

“This year, the varieties that have performed well in the long-term performance data are still right up there.”

Mr Porker said the season in the northern Mallee was particularly tough, with the Waikerie NVT droughted, resulting in complete crop failure.

“The key point with the NVT results this year is that we’ve seen a wide range of frost, heat, and water limited yield environments and we should expect varieties to behave differently across the state,” Mr Porker said.

“Yields have been anywhere from 0.3 tonne a hectare to 7t/ha in areas like the Yorke Peninsula, Cummins and the South East.”

Mr Porker said the SA Crop Sowing Guide was designed for growers to look at the varieties they might be considering growing next year and it was best used in conjunction with the 2018 yield results that are coming out now online with GRDC’s NVT website as well the long term yield reporter.

“When making variety decisions, don’t just use this year’s information, long-term yield performance is key,” Mr Porker said.

“Just because a variety has done well at an individual site doesn’t mean it will perform well across all sites and years.”

Mr Porker said a new feature in the crop sowing guide this year were snapshots of the state’s grain quality trends.

It features trends in test weights, screenings and grain retention for wheat and barley.

Mr Porker said a few new wheat varieties were released in 2018.

“Vixen was one new release and early indicators are that it’s yielding similarly to Scepter,” he said.

Vixen is an early to mid season variety released by Intergrain in 2018 and it has an AH classification in SA.

“There’s also been a lot of movement in the Clearfield varieties,” Mr Porker said.

“A lot of Clearfield options are now offering higher yields and have performed well in 2018.

Mr Porker said two Clearfield varieties worth looking at were Sheriff CL and Razor CL.

Razor is an early developing ASW wheat available through AGT.

The long term performance of Razor suggests it is the highest yielding Clearfield variety, on average 3 per cent higher than Mace.

Sheriff is a mid to late developing APW wheat through Intergrain.

It can be sown slightly earlier than other Clearfield options

The long term performance of Sherriff suggests it yields similarly to Mace

“Chief is a variety that has been released for a little longer but it’s still one to keep an eye on,” Mr Porker said.

“It’s still a relatively high yielder in the Clearfield space.”

Looking at barley, Mr Porker said Banks and Buff were new releases in 2018.

“Banks is a slower developing variety, similar to Planet’s development speed,” he said.

“Banks has passed stage one of malting accreditation and a target decision date for its malting accreditation is March 2019, which is the same for RGT Planet.”

Mr Porker said barley variety performance in 2018 depended on the yield environment and timing of stress.

“Take Fathom and Compass for example, under low rainfall, and drought conditions,” he said.

“They have done really well compared to other years particularly in circumstances where crop growth was poor.”

Compass was malting accredited in 2018 and Fathom is a feed variety but both varieties show good early vigour and weed competitiveness.

The yield performance of the Clearfield variety Spartacus CL was slightly down compared to previous years but continued to show an improvement on the other Clearfield variety Scope CL.

Whereas in higher yielding districts the feed varieties RGT Planet and Rosalind performed well.

Mr Porker has been part of a team working on a GRDC-funded project looking at winter wheats for pre-Anzac day sowing.

Latrobe University in Melbourne is leading the project through researcher James Hunt.

A full wrap of the winter wheat project will be presented at the Adelaide GRDC update in February

“There’s now good evidence that the best winter wheat yield performance sown early is similar compared to Scepter when it’s sown at its optimum time in May, but it’s never better,” Mr Porker said.

“The project has renewed interest in early sowing, with a number of slower developing varieties available, so watch this space.”

Mr Porker said Illabo and DS Bennett were new winter wheat releases in 2018 and worth watching.

Illabo is a dual-purpose, winter wheat for grazing and grain production and is the highest yielding EGA Wedgetail alternative available.

It is APH quality classification and mid winter maturity.

DS Bennett is a high yielding awnless winter wheat with ASW classification.

It is suitable for graze and grain production and sowing from mid March.