MALLEE Sustainable Farming has picked a very good time for its current trials on strategies to get crops through a dry year.
Because by and large, that’s exactly what it got in large slabs of its footprint.
Ouyen’s long-term average rainfall is 330mm – it had received just 106.9mm. Mildura’s long term should be 287mm but just 127.4mm had fallen.
MSF managing director Jenny Garonne said this year’s trials focused on early sowing into moisture at depth, and deep ripping.
She said staff had just completed spring crop walks at Anabranch South in south-west NSW and the Millewa in the Victorian Mallee.
Ms Garonne said NSW farmers who visited Nigel Baird’s Anabranch South property saw two wheat varieties (Hammer and Calibre, a longer coleoptile type wheat) sown at different times (mid-April, early May and mid-May) and to different depths (40 mm and at 75 mm).
She said according to Mr Baird, there was significant moisture at depth in the district at the start of the year due to January’s extraordinary rainfall, and the early, deep-sown crop did come up earlier than much of the later, or shallow-sown, crop – and had also developed more biomass.
“At this stage, the Calibre crop is not obviously better than Hammer – but yield data at the end of the season will provide the best insight,” Ms Garonne said.
“Farmers also toured Nigel’s field pea and lentil crops, which were also sown early into moisture, and were impressed to see crops showing average or above-average biomass for the district, despite a dry winter.”
According to Peter Baird, an agronomist in the district, the earlier-sown crops were obviously outperforming later-sown crops this year due to good moisture at depth early, and poor rainfall since.
MSF followed the NSW walk with another on the Victorian side of the Murray, where participants this time were looking at a deep ripping site on Chris and Anthony Hunt’s property south of Werrimull.
Here, the Hunts ripped about one third of the paddock (of mostly sandy loam soils on the higher parts of the dune swale landscape) in the autumn, with tynes at a depth of 370mm and set on 350mm spacings, before rolling and sowing Maximus barley on May 17.
Dr Chris McDonough dug a soil pit across ripped and unripped ground, and highlighted how barley plants are obviously bigger, with bigger root systems accessing more moisture at depth in the ripped areas.
Chris identified the ripping operation had only just reached a clay layer, and suggested further work was needed to identify the optimal depth for ripping, and how big the yield advantage would be – and for how long.
Ms Garonne said the last port of call on the walk saw the Millewa group visit a site at Tunart, south of Meringur, to see a site where Ballista and Calibre wheat had been sown at two different depths (40mm and 75mm) under different pre-emergent herbicide treatments.
She said this trial had been investigating whether deep sowing provides early establishment opportunities and allows a wider range of pre-emergents to be used safely.
“At this site, both varieties and sowing depths looked similar, with no visible herbicide damage on any plot, but the site still prompted great discussions about sowing depth, varieties and pre-emergent herbicides,” Ms Garonne said.
“What we are hoping for is some cooler weather or even a spring rain, and we look forward to reporting in with yield results at the end of the season.
“Our emphasis through all this research and extension is to meet the needs of our growers, and these are just some of the trials we are running through the year – we are also looking at nitrogen banking, varietal trials in cereals and lentils, sowing strategies, sandy soils and intercropping.
“And they stretch from Tailem Bend in South Australia, across the Victorian Mallee and into NSW, based around the research plan we have developed in response to the feedback from our members growers and their research needs.”
