Technical Bulletin – 17 April 2019

• Recent rainfall across the region has provided a welcome boost to yield potential for 2025.
• Growers are finalising winter weed control programs.
• Cereal crops currently range from mid tillering to early stem elongation.
• Reports of stripe rust around Boort and Nullawil
• The BioScout unit installed at the BCG Main Site, Birchip has detected low levels of rust spores (see below).

In the northern Mallee, reports of Etiella and Heliothis may create more activity in the coming days and weeks. For the southern Mallee, most growers are looking for more rain to protect yield potential, and late fungicide sprays have gone out on wheat.

In the Wimmera (North, Central and West) soil moisture levels are good (explained later in this bulletin) and there are isolated reports of armyworm activity that warrant some monitoring, particularly in cereal on cereal rotations.

Some action points from recent BCG events: leave the fenceline and get out into your crops to assess for potential frost or heat stress damage, adjust your header set up ready for the coming months, succession planning is an ongoing process and farming is about decision making and we can only influence the quality of our decision making by acting more consciously on the best available knowledge.

• Recent rains have lifted spirits, helping to consolidate crop growth and encourage timely urea applications.  

• Wind damage in light soils has led to patchy canola losses and re-sowing with cereals in parts of the Wimmera.  

• Staggered crop emergence remains a theme although some regions are reporting more uniform growth.  

• Stubble burning used as a last resort to allow for sowing.
• Canola crops are being sown or are already emerging in some regions.
• Slug and snail management continuing.
• Mice in localised areas requiring management.
• Crop nutrition budgets are being developed from soil test results and yield expectations.