Grains Research and Development Corporation

⚠️ Consistent early rainfall has increased blackleg risk for canola. Protect yields through early disease identification and appropriate management tactics.

◾High levels of blackleg infection are already being reported in many regions.

◾If growing a canola cultivar rated Moderately Resistant or below for blackleg, consider the application of a foliar fungicide application to help control crown canker of blackleg while crops are at the 4-8 leaf growth stage.

◾If growing a canola cultivar rated Moderately Resistant or below for blackleg upper canopy infection and flowering will commence in July or early August, consider a fungicide application at 30% bloom.

◾Consult the BlacklegCM and BlacklegCM UCI apps, or the 2026 Blackleg Management Guide, to determine blackleg risk.

Read the full paddock practices article ▶️ https://bit.ly/4f02NoD

📷 Steve Marcroft, Marcroft Grains Pathology

The GRDC Disease Management Extension Network is led by AgCommunicators.

A pilot program developed 12 months ago to back farm advisers working with growers has evolved into a GRDC-supported program: ‘Supporting others through tough times’.

Developed by Beck Burgess Consulting, Sarah Crosthwaite of Open Road Consulting and rural psychologist Steph Schmidt - Farm.Life.Psych, the program provides advisers with techniques to help growers navigate tough times while taking care of themselves.

For growers, planning for the season can bring heightened anxiety about what can and can’t be done for crops and farm management.

In an industry such as agriculture, where many variables are out of a grower’s control, this can continue throughout a season. Advisers such as agronomists are often the ones helping growers manage this anxiety and stress.

For an adviser, these difficult conversations can occur several times a day, every day of the week. Mental health professionals say that while understanding growers’ concerns is essential, advisers also need to know how to manage their own wellbeing.

Read the full article https://bit.ly/4eQKJ0Z

📷 Paul Jones

NEW WEBINAR: Grains Research Update, online – An introduction to harvestable annual pasture legume options; and their benefits in the mixed farming system ▶️ https://bit.ly/4vh8pl1

Ron Yates (Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development) explains:

🌿 what harvestable annual pasture legumes are
🌿 how hard seed breakdown occurred through climatic and soil conditions
🌿 how these legumes could be effectively used within current mixed farming systems.

Research conducted across WA and NSW provides guidance on identifying species and varieties with optimum breakdown patterns, enabling summer sowing opportunities in low to medium rainfall zones of Australia.

The Smith family were Green Range pioneers. Scott Smith’s father and uncle cleared the original block for sheep, along with some cropping to help develop the new country. When the wool market crashed in the early 1990s, the farm transitioned to more cropping, which its light sandy soils made challenging.

In this month's grower series update, Scott says:

"We had good rain just before Easter, 35 to 55 mm, so started with sowing canola in the following week. It meant we started sowing in early April and finished around Anzac Day.

With a sprinkle of rain after Anzac Day, approximately 15 mm over 3 events, it was enough to get the crops established, even though it has been warm and windy since then. There is enough soil moisture to get the cereals up. The canola has been very patchy on the non-wetting areas.

The forecast was for good follow-up rain but we got only 3 mm. The thought was to plant winter wheat, but without that rain, we have swapped to barley. I was in two minds anyway with wheat given the margins – the lack of rain sealed the deal for barley. Seeding finished mid-May.

Late May the plan was to start post-emergent sprays on the canola. If we had had decent rain, the early canola would have been sprayed for w**ds. By mid-May there hadn’t been much w**d germination.

In May we saw early signs of redlegged earth mite and balaustium mite and vegetable weevils in the canola. We had some bad conical snail patches in the canola and some needed 2 rounds of baiting, but the numbers overall were low. It will be a ‘watch and see’. Any snails that are left at harvest can be screened out. Mice haven’t been a trouble for us – we still run plenty of sheep and some cattle in the rotation.

Fuel, nitrogen and lime have been more challenging to get hold of and some simply didn’t turn up, so we did drop the level of seeding phosphorous because of the shortage. Nitrogen should be delivered okay – more of a logistical nightmare than anything else.

For the next couple of months, it will just be watching the weather – too much rain and we end up waterlogged and with nutrient leaching. If it gets too wet, I’ll need to look at using higher rates of nitrogen, if the crop hasn’t suffered too much damage. Our country does better in the drier years.

Not too wet, not too cold would be good for the next couple of months!"

Read the full update ▶️ https://bit.ly/3QCjvC3

📷 Evan Collis/GRDC

These fact sheets provide an overview of the basic principles of nitrogen fixation and management tips to capture the benefits in crop legumes for the southern, northern and western regions.

🌱 Crop legumes in Australia fix about 110 to 120 kg N/ha on average annually.
🌱 An estimated 250,000 tonnes of nitrogen, with a nominal value of $380 million, was fixed by crop legumes in 2023.
🌱 Growing crop legumes in rotation with cereals can reduce the fertiliser nitrogen (N) requirement of following crops and improve crop productivity.

Download them now:
Southern https://bit.ly/449Kat6
Northern https://bit.ly/3QouFdE
Western https://bit.ly/4uxr6Qb

Flexibility is crucial to the Lyne family's high-input farming system in Tasmania, where crop profitability is calculated on a rolling 10-year average.

The Lyne family – brothers Angus and Sam, their wives Lauren and Chloe, and parents Crosby and Poppy – produce a wide range of crops, along with wool, Merino and first-cross lambs, and Angus weaners, on 2,600 ha.

Angus, Sam and Crosby share responsibility for the various enterprises, with Angus managing the cropping side of the business and Sam and Crosby focusing on livestock, with support from a good team of staff.

Crops include barley, wheat, processing peas, poppies, potatoes and seed crops of grass, clover, chicory, canola, wheat, carrot and beetroot.

‘Riccarton’ was traditionally operated as a dryland sheep, cattle and cereal property until the early 2000s when irrigation was installed.

Barley has always played a bigger role in the rotation, it has more flexibility, a lower cost of production and performs better under harsher environmental conditions than canola and wheat.

Angus says he has favoured spring barley crops since the introduction of RGT Planet in 2017. Benefits include the shorter growing season, cheaper input costs and competition against w**ds.

Spring barley also works well in a rotation with an autumn r**e crop to fill the winter feed deficit and provides opportunities for later application of knockdown herbicides, he says.

Read the full story ▶️ https://bit.ly/4emv34p

📷 Nick H Visuals

Fertiliser is one of the most significant input costs facing growers, so knowing where to apply it to maximise return on investment and profitability is critical.

A new GRDC investment is aiming to improve strategies for managing phosphorus in high phosphorus-fixing soils (high P-fixing soils) in the southern and western regions of Australia.

The 4-year, $9.96 million project is led by Agriculture Victoria (Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change), in partnership with several organisations.

Project leader Dr Ashley Wallace from Agriculture Victoria said high phosphorus fixing soils include highly calcareous, alkaline soils in SA and western Victoria and also acid-gravel soils that contain ironstone nodules in the south-west of WA, the lower Eyre Peninsula, southern Mt Lofty Ranges in SA and the Victorian and SA high rainfall zones.

On-farm trials will be undertaken across the western and southern regions by project partners in the WA Wheatbelt, Yorke Peninsula and Eyre Peninsula in SA, and the southern Mallee and high rainfall zone in Victoria.

“The project will investigate the economics of phosphorus responses in high P-fixing soils, residual phosphorus, compare phosphorus formulations, including liquid and granular products, and also look at the impact of spatial variation in phosphorus fixing potential of soils,” Dr Wallace said.

Read more: https://bit.ly/4oDaMfI

🤝 Partners:
The University of Western Australia
Adelaide University
La Trobe University
Agronomy Solutions
BCG (Birchip Cropping Group)
Trengove Consulting
AIR EP - Ag Innovation & Research Eyre Peninsula
Facey Group
Southern DIRT
SEPWA
Wayne Pluske (Equii)
AgCommunicators

Chela Dempster and her family are based at Arrowsmith, south-west of Mingenew, WA. The farm is largely wheat, canola and lupins across 5 blocks, with approximately 1,000 Merinos and cross-bred sheep in rotation. With a predominantly sandy soil, the challenges are to improve this and manage w**ds.

In this GroundCover edition's grower series update, Chela says:

"We had hoped for decent rainfall on the back of Tropical Cyclone Narelle in March, but the 10 mm we got was pretty disappointing – we had more wind than anything useful. During April we had 3 rain events to give us another 13 mm, so pretty much dry sowing for us. We started sowing just before Anzac Day.

With the fuel and fertiliser issues, we pulled the pin on doing more deep-ripping to focus on sowing. We figured we would be better off keeping what diesel we had for sowing and spraying. We have only just gone back (mid to late May) to a bit of deep ripping now that most of the sowing of the canola and lupins is done. I was pretty happy to see the fuel guy turn up. Poor bloke was juggling what fuel he could get hold of to make sure we all had enough to get us through.

The lupins are up but looking a bit thirsty. For the last of the wheat, we can wait until June to sow and hope we get a bit of rain. We pulled back about 500 ha of wheat planting this year – fertiliser is better spent on canola. We didn’t end up doing any lime either. This is a first for us not to lime, so we are hoping there is enough in the system already that it shouldn’t have too much impact on the crops. We will keep an eye out for bugs in the canola and w**ds in the lupins in the next couple of months.

Our other focus at the moment is dealing with the mice – and yes, it is plague proportions for a lot of us around here.

When Tim brings the tractor back to the machinery shed, you can see a wave of mice moving in front of him. We are madly baiting – some blocks for the second time. We are going to do some of the second baiting using a drone, so it will be interesting to see how that goes.

Those in our district with a bit of soil moisture will do ok, but with our sandy soils, we need some rain."

Read the full update ▶️ https://bit.ly/3QCjvC3

📷 Evan Collis/GRDC

"My interest in being sponsored by GRDC stemmed from a desire to better understand the grains industry, particularly through the lens of nutrition and its critical role in livestock production."

Hear from 2024 GRDC AgriFutures Australia Horizon Scholar Maria Costantino from the University of Sydney, as she shares her journey through the Horizon scholarship program.

Maria discusses her city roots, her Horizon placements and aspirations for the future. Read it now ▶️ https://bit.ly/4aIORh5

📷 AgriFutures Australia