DESPITE late germination and a dry September, harvest yields are expected to be above average on parts of the Eyre Peninsula this year.
In it's winter crop performance report, PIRSA estimated 1.767 million tonne of wheat for the combined western, lower and eastern Eyre Peninsula districts.
Western EP is expected to produce 597,000t from 442,000 hectares (1.35t/ha), lower EP 542,000t from 146,000ha (3.7t/ha) and eastern EP 628,000t from 369,000ha (1.7t/ha).
There is expected to be 549,000t of Barley produced for the region with Western EP to harvest 141,000t from 91,000ha (1.5t/ha), Lower EP 270,000t from 68,000ha (4t/ha) and Eastern EP 138,000t from 77,000ha (1.8t/ha).
The canola harvest has begun in some areas with a total of 161,900t expected to be collected.
Western EP is expected to produce 6500t from 5700ha (1.1t/ha), lower EP 148,000t from 74,000ha (2t/ha) and eastern EP 7400t from 7500ha (0.98t/ha).
In the lower Eyre Peninsula, I reckon we are going to have an average to above average season.
- DENIS PEDLER
Carr's Seeds agronomist Denis Pedler believes that considering the challenges this season, it should be a good harvest.
"On the lower EP, I still reckon we are going to have an average to above average season," he said.
"The most promising crops for yield potential would be canola, wheat and then barley.
"Half the canola program for the area has already been desiccated or windrowed and I expect wheat harvest to begin in December.
"In a competition held recently, there were a number of crops with a yield potential of above 6t/ha.
"Canola is particularly difficult to guess yield potential, but I expect to see plenty of crops between 2-3t/ha
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"But there will definitely still be paddocks which will struggle to yield 1t/ha due to the wet July that we experienced.
"Average canola yield for the area is between mid-two to high-2t/ha.
"I think the stand-out for me this year has been the TruFlex canola and the Roundup Ready canola.
"It has been very pleasing to see the weed control in those crops. It has been very impressive."
He believes there are a number of detrimental factors affecting this year's harvest yield.
"The season got off to a late start, in late May, which affected germination and the density of the crops," Mr Pedler said.
"Small areas of both the eastern and western EP's barley and wheat crops will be affected by the hail event in October.
"We also received some frost damage again this year.
"While it is not as bad as last year, it will still have an impact.
"Last year we had some reasonable areas have frost, which had never seen frost before.
"This year we have seen some areas which generally get a frost have some damage however it is a relatively small area compared to last year."
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