EPARF Member Day 2010
Over 100 farmers attended the 'Cereal Growth Stages' member day held at Minnipa Agricultural Centre to learn about cereal growth stages and how to improve the profitability of growing crops.
EPARF chairperson Peter Kuhlmann, welcomed members and introduced Dr Glenn McDonald, University of Adelaide who explained how cereals develop from germination through to grain fill, the critical stages of the life cycle where production potential is set and impacted upon.
Participants then moved to demonstration plots and pots that had been sown early, with a bit of help from irrigation! A number of local agronomists assisted with these demonstrations.
- Linden Masters, SARDI Minnipa and Chris Pearce, presented information on emergence, tillering and ear initiation;
- Craig James and Tristan Baldock, focused on stem elongation to booting and demonstrated how to dissect wheat plants to identify early growth stages, with participant hands-on cutting up plants;
- Tim Moyle and Marty Lovegrove, discussed the flowering stage of cereal; and
- Mark Habner and Hayden Whitwell were in charge of the grain fill demonstration.
All sessions were rated high, good relevant information by participants!
Barry Mudge, Rural Solutions delivered a presentation on soil water, stating understanding how much soil moisture can be stored and become available to a crop will assist in making some robust farming business decisions.
Nigel Wilhelm, SARDI followed with a session on critical growth stages for maintaining sound nutrition of crops.
Next, more group sessions:
- Seed germination and sprouting was delivered by Dr Glenn
- McDonald and Lyndon May, agronomist Adelaide;
- Ken Webber, Nufarm Australia gave some clear messages regarding growth stages and timing of herbicides;
- Hugh Wallwork, SARDI provided information about fungicides and pesticides.
The day concluded with Andy Bates, local consultant summarizing the days messages with a list of things we do that impact on the critical yield development stages.
