With the warm weather finally arriving crops have begun to ripen quickly.
At the BCG/Agritech Rural research site at Kalkee in the Wimmera the wheat has finished flowering and is beginning to fill grain, while the barley is more advanced.
At this site the performance of crops sown within the desired window in mid May will be compared with crops sown in late June. The wheat and barley sown at these times has been monitored weekly. Flowering time, grain yield and quality will be compared to determine if, this season, there was any penalty from sowing later than the desired time.
It is critical to match the maturity of a crop to a sowing time. The goal is to ensure the crop flowers at a time which is conducive to grain fill and minimises the risk of frost damage or heat shock which can cause infertile florets.
Heavy tall crops have been no match against high winds and rain this season. Across many of our sites we have observed lodging in numerous trials, most notably barley and oat trials. To accommodate for the lodged plots, the percent of the plot affected is being determined and recorded.
Two grazing demonstrations are being carried out at Kaniva and Jil Jil this year as part of the Grain & Graze 3 initiative. At each site two sheep exclusion cages have been erected so the growth and performance of grazed and ungrazed crop can be compared. Biomass cuts are performed at growth stages 30, 65 and maturity. This will allow us to track how the crop has recovered over the season and the level of feed available depending on grazing pressure.
The above average rainfall in September has resulted in many of our trials sending up secondary tillers which are significantly behind, growth stage wise, than the rest of the crop. This has the potential to cause havoc at harvest as the crop will appear to be ripe but the secondary tillers are only filling grain which is still doughy. To counteract this issue we will need to desiccate trials to ensure harvest runs smoothly.
In the coming weeks BCG’s focus will be on harvest preparations as the busy period draws closer. Header services and maintenance operations are in full swing, and staff will undertake header driver and maintenance training on November 2.
Harvest is expected to begin around mid-November, with 12,000 trial plots to be harvested.
