Projects: Nutrition
Silicon: a novel solution to reduce water use and pest damage in wheat
Quantify how silicon fertilisation increases water use efficiency and pest resistance in wheat at the field scale with agronomic practices in place, including farm settings with contrasting agricultural landscapes. Elucidate silicon intervention strategies and their benefits for yields relative to input and deployment costs and disseminate this information to farmers. One field trial to…
Building farming systems resilience and future proofing the impacts of drought through accelerating the adoption of proven cost-effective and yield responsive soil and fertiliser management practices by farmers across southern Australia
The project focuses on accelerating adoption of proven soil resource management practices offering significant opportunity to build farming systems drought resilience, reduce yield variability, increase sustainability and profitability. On Eyre Peninsula, the project is focussed on: Improving productivity of low rainfall problem sands with a reliable break crop (lentil) with soil amelioration on EP Farmers are…
Drought Resilience Practices in Mixed Farming Systems- Cross Hub Project
Summary Demonstration sites to be established in low rainfall farming systems to: 1. Demonstrate practices to improve rotations to increase soil N and reduce grass weeds for wheat production. 2. Determine if there are other measurable benefits to the farming system e.g. biomass production (for livestock feed), weed control and yield from early sowing?
SA Drought Hub Activities 2022: Best Practice Early Sowing Opportunities
Summary This project aimed to demonstrate and extend the findings of a SAGIT research project conducted in 2019-2021, which found ways to improve plant establishment and crop production by adopting specific early sowing techniques. Separating seed and fertiliser, sowing earlier than district practice, and using longer coleoptile wheat varieties to sow deeper into soil moisture,…
RiskWi$e: National Risk Management Initiative – Action Research Groups Eyre Peninsula
Summary RiskWi$e: the National Risk Management Initiative (NRMI) is a GRDC initiative extending over five years that aims to understand and improve risk-reward outcomes for Australian grain growers through participatory action research (PAR). Explicitly the NRMI aims to: 1. develop an improved understanding of the risk-reward relationships for important on-farm management practices and decisions, 2….
Enterprise choice and sequence strategies that drive sustainable and profitable southern Australian farming systems
Southern Farming Systems Project Edillilie Site – Lower Eyre Peninsula Farm profitability can be improved by identifying the factors that drive profit and adopting management that optimises returns and mitigates risks. Growers are under mounting pressure to maintain profitability due to constraints such as input costs, herbicide resistance, declining soil fertility, increasing soil-borne pathogens and…
AIR EP/SAGIT Lower EP Ag Expo 2022
Lower EP Ag Expo 2022 held on March 8, at Ungarra with 50 people attending. Final report submitted to SAGIT in April 2022.
GRDC Hands-on Precision Agriculture Training (HOPAT) project
Summary Assist Pinion Advisory to deliver 2 Precision Ag workshops. Initial PA workshop held at Cleve on 16 Feb 2021, 18 attended. Sent follow-up survey to participants to inform next workshop content. Final workshop held in Cleve 7 September 2021. 4 farmers attended. Dan Adams from Cockaleechie presented on his experiences with PA.
Sustainable Agriculture program – a three year agriculture extension program
Delivery of the Eyre Peninsula Landscape Board’s Sustainable Agriculture program, funded by the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program Regional Land Partnerships (RLP) initiative, which includes a project work order to deliver the Regenerative Agriculture Program (RAP). Project components: Soil acidification General agricultural support to EP Landscape Board Soil organic carbon and mixed species demonstrations Mallee…
More profitable crops on highly calcareous soils by improving early vigour and overcoming soil constraints
Outcomes will be modified agronomic practices and improved soil conditions which increase WUE of crops and farm profitability as well as improved knowledge of the impact of high carbonate on crop performance. Highly calcareous soils challenge crop production with a range of constraints and this limits the effectiveness of improved agronomic practices. Early crop vigour…