15 things I learnt from the GRDC Adviser Updates – Adelaide & Bendigo

1. “The top 25% farmers are making double the return on capital to the other 75%” – John Kirkeguard. That’s crazy so how closely are you modelling the top farmers in your region?

2. “Using glyphosate alone on fence lines is a no go” – Peter Boutsalis. It’s a “monty” to lead to resistance so use anything but glyphosate

3.  “If you want to make $20-$200/Ha more in canola simply slow down driving your header!” – Peter Newman. Measure your losses by capturing the grain put out of the back of your header and adjust your sieve speed, fan, rotor and fins to capture what you’ve grown.

4. “Go narrow row spacing and sow East – West for weed competition” – Peter Newman. The trend is back to narrower row spacing to increase weed competition and increase yield.

5.  MRL’s are now world standards – Rohan Rainbow. If 3 countries change their MRL’s it sets a new world standard to anyone that wants to export there. We need to pay closer attention to this moving forward.

6. Seasonal forecasting is getting better with the use of exciting new technology – but it’s not really accurate until May – Dale Grey.

7.  Russian Wheat Aphid – no one knows what’s in store this year as it depends on conditions. The good news is that Chlorpyrifos at 500ml seemed to kill aphids last year!

8. “Rotations and double knocks are key to prevent resistant weeds” – Peter Newman. With this in mind it might be worth thinking about using more Paraquat while prices are so low.

9.   Chickpeas – if you want great yields look at increasing the quality of your seed.

a. most are recommending insecticide on seed e.g. Imidacloprid

b. wet slurry inoculant matches the performance of dry inoculant if it’s applied well.

10.  When sowing Jumbo 2 Lentils a Pre-canopy fungicide spray is a must for insurance – Jason Brand.

11.  Pulses are inflated now but not always so be careful chasing the rainbow. Some Wimmera growers only just sold legumes they’d harvested 2yrs ago so if you’re going to go there you need to have on farm storage – Jason Brand

12. “Go early to increase competition on weeds to help pre-emergent chemical” – Dr Chris Preston.

13. Prosulfocarb (a key ingredient in Boxer Gold) is now available on its own and will create many new options for pre-emergent and post-emergent (not on label yet) applications over the next few years. Chris Preston.

14. Trials showed an 18-35% increase in yields when applying fungicides to Mace Wheat.

15. Fungicides on wheat were best at GS30 and best before canopy closure. Best results were obtained when targeting the base of the crop.

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