Crop Updates

Urea is as effective as CAN when no rain for 10 days

Key Messages

When urea or calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) were applied at the same N rate to Mundah barley 4 weeks after sowing, the yield response to urea was twice that of the CAN when the nitrogen (N) was applied just prior to a 27 mm rainfall event.  Suprisingly, when these N fertilisers were applied after the rain and no rain fell in the next 10 days, the urea still performed as well as the CAN in terms of grain yield.  With both timings, with respect to rainfall, the urea was economically better than the CAN where more than 20 kgN/ha was applied giving up to an extra $110/ha return.

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Weed control opportunities with GM canola

Key Messages

Australia’s agricultural profitability and sustainability is being threatened by weeds proliferating and becoming resistant to many different herbicide groups.  Annual ryegrass (Lolium rigidim) is a particularly severe problem in Western Australia.  Farmers are increasingly growing wheat on wheat as part of their rotation and are consequently increasing the amount of stubble burning for slight improvements in trifluralin efficacy on ryegrass. GM canola would greatly improve our ability to control weeds, maintain stubble as a carbon sink and protect our soil from wind and water erosion.

With less pastures in their rotations, inconsistent returns from pulse crops, high levels of resistance to grass selective herbicides, and with canola being a risky and expensive crop to grow, farmers are increasingly vulnerable to weeds. This puts our farmers is a similar position to Canadian farmers 10 years ago with wild oat, kochia and green foxtail resistance, before the advent of GM technology.

GM canola has largely been responsible for sustained clean crop rotations in Canada. Canada now boasts 77% of their canola crop being GM. This does not include another 18% of IMI canola which is produced by mutagenesis (arguably GM) and they have no TT canola. This leaves only about 5% of their canola being not herbicide tolerant.  Western Australian farmers have to mostly (90%) rely on the ground water-polluting herbicide Atrazine which is somehow supposed to maintain our ‘clean and green’ image. Anti-GM activists have the ear of politicians with shallow logic and this is hurting us.

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