Water was oozing from most paddocks and almost every roadside when the Summit Team toured trial sites in the high rainfall Wheatbelt. Picture taken at the end of the tour on the property of Denabling Grazing (Lewis Hardie is with the Summit Team - fifth from left).
Summit's field research program extends across the length and breadth of the state’s broadacre regions. This season a record 42 trials were sown and August is a good time to update Area Managers and technical staff on trial progress, along with other areas of industry interest. Narrogin based Area Manager, Brett Coxon, led the team this year by organising contact with key people and Summit trial sites in his area.
The first stop on the tour was a visit to 3 Farmers, who have been growing quinoa since 2010. On the day, Narrogin farmer Ashley Wiese explained the art of growing quinoa in the WA Wheatbelt, along with giving an insight into processing and marketing this ancient grain.
Next we met up with Intergrain's National Oat Breeder, Dr Allan Rattey who brought Area Mangers up to speed on the intricacies of oat breeding and developing new lines suited to our conditions.
The team then travelled to Geoff Poultney's property in East Pingelly to look over our 2 of our trials; phosphorus rates in Scepter wheat (SUM 21-GP4), which is part of our GRDC P-rates project, and manganese rates in Scepter wheat (SUM 21.04). The manganese rates trial expands on our manganese work completed in the previous seasons and investigates manganese rates ranging from 0 to 9 kg/ha both as a blend and compound. Manganese foliar spray applications are also being assessed.
This was followed by a roadside chat with SACOA Regional Manager WA Damon Fleay to hear the latest about their unique moisture attraction and retention agent SE14™ .
The final leg of the tour was a visit to see Lewis Hardie of Denabling Grazing and inspect our joint trial with Consult Ag on the property. This trial (SUM 21.06) is an N rates +/- growth regulator (Moddus) trial in oats with N rates ranging from 30-120 kg/ha with and without Moddus applied. All of our trial results will be published to our Field Research trials page when available.
A big thank you to Brett Coxon for organising such a great day and to all growers and researchers involved!
