New export hay project begins to help improve quality and yield

That's the goal of a new Agrifutures Australia funded project led by the University of Australia through SARDI, which will run for four years and help to deliver aims from the Agrifutures Australia Export Fodder Program strategic plan.

The new project has four main objectives, including a benchmarking survey to understand and benchmark grower practices, assess novel strategies to regulate the switch between vegetative and reproductive stages of oats to help increase biomass and maintain quality.

The project will also evaluate agronomic strategies to enhance tillering of oat varieties.

Hart research and extension manager Rebekah Allen believed it was a great project but there were some challenges with the program.

"A lot of the work being done has really stemmed from the Agrifutures Australia industry forum and two outcomes were to increase hay yield and maintain quality, and reduce curing time of oaten hay," she said.

"Agrifutures has some big goals for us to achieve."

Some of the goals were to improve yield by at least 10 per cent across the next three years.

Ms Allen believed some of it could be provided through variety selection alone.

"They also want the project to provide agronomic packages to reduce oaten hay curing time by up to 20pc," she said.

"That is a big target but we can definitely work toward it to sustain the industry."

The new project is in its first year and has six trial sites across SA and Vic.

The project has four main objectives - a benchmarking survey to understand and benchmark grower practices, assess novel strategies to regulate the switch between vegetative and look at reproductive stages of oats, to help increase biomass and maintain quality.

"It is important to feed back all of this information to growers and industry more broadly," Ms Allen said.

One of the biggest components of the project is to work with growers, advisers and the wider industry.

"We are looking at curing time from cutting to bailing oaten hay and we are very keen to work with growers to understand systems and look at new strategies to help growers," Ms Allen said.

So far, Ms Allen believed anecdotal results from the reproduction and tillering trial have shown kelp extract products to stimulate early growth and biomass has been a beneficial treatment.

"We are also looking at the use of different salts in the true form as a drying agent for hay," she said.

"It was raised by industry at a forum. But we will look at hay quality because we do not have any existing data on its usage."

NOVEL strategies to help influence the reproduction switch of oaten hay is being investigated in a four-year project.

The idea behind the project is to delay flowering through the use of a couple of treatments to remove florets before grain filling.

Hart research and extension manager Rebekah Allen said the crop's nutrients post the removal of florets would then be investigated.

"We are using a couple of liquid bio-stimulates - mainly seaweed products or products with a wide range of nutrients to support early vegetative growth," she said.

Ms Allen said also in the experimental phase, was using a non-protein amino acid.

"We believe there could be some benefits, such as it could facilitate nutrient uptake, as well as growth promoting effects," she said.

But, this flowering delay technique has only been used in grape production.

"It is very much in horticulture and not registered - so it is something we are playing around with," Ms Allen said.

The project will also have case study paddocks.

"We want to work more closely with growers and it is something which has been missing from previous investments," Ms Allen said.

"We are keen to look at ways to reduce time from cutting to bailing at suitable moisture content," she said.

The project will look at conditioners, cutting height and windrow management.