Victoria, Australia
November 26, 2012
The head of Europe’s largest cereal breeding program has visited Australia to launch a new venture that will give local growers access to a virtually untapped source of advanced plant genetics for the first time next season.
Apart from one variety of red wheat, Australian grain producers have never been able to take advantage of the massive research and development program run by the French-owned company, RAGT Semences, which has generated thousands of new lines for their European counterparts, including some of the continent’s most successful commercial cropping and feed varieties.
Seed Force New Zealand managing director Warwick Green (left), Peter McKay from Don McKay Farm Supplies at Colac and South West Agronomy’s David Wisewould.
That situation is about to change with the launch of a new broadacre business by leading Australian forage seed wholesalers, Seed Force Pty Ltd. Plans for the new enterprise were announced at a special field day near Lake Bolac in western Victoria, attended by RAGT Semences cereal director Samuel Gaste.
The event gave invited farm advisers and rural retailers a chance to take a look at trials of both wheat and canola varieties in the pipeline for Australia’s temperate high rainfall zones, including the first varieties of quality, high yielding wheat and long-season canolas scheduled for release in time for the 2013 season.
This year saw 22 lines of wheat go into replicated broadacre trials and another 16 into early evaluation trials at four sites in Victoria (Lake Bolac, Cressy, Hamilton and Warrnambool) as well as in northern Tasmania. Material has also been included in this year’s Grains Research and Development Corporation’s National Variety Trials and trials run by Southern Farming Systems.
The winter lines represent just the tip of the iceberg of plant material produced every year by RAGT which registers more than 200 new varieties every year, ranging from cereals and oilseeds to corn, soya, forage brassicas and grasses.
Founded by French farmers almost 100 years ago, RAGT today operates across Europe, spending 14% of its substantial annual turnover on developing new varieties in a program that employs 280 researchers working on 24 different species at 16 research stations. Australian access to varieties from this extensive program has been made possible because RAGT is a cornerstone shareholder of Seed Force, via its parent company in New Zealand.
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Pictured at the special field day near Lake Bolac in western Victoria are Seed Force sales agronomoist Andrew McNaughton, Hamilton (Victoria), with Craig Altmann from NAS Agribusiness at Naracoorte (SA), David Toose from AGF Seeds at Smeaton (Victoria) and Seed Force Trading & Operations Manager, David Gould.
“We are extremely excited about the potential for our links with RAGT to benefit Australian farmers by giving them access to new varieties of both cereals and oilseeds that are unique in their performance, disease resistance and yielding ability,” says Seed Force Australian Business Development Director, Mike Gout.
“To date, no RAGT cereal or canola genetics have been available in Australia, except for Frelon wheat, which has performed very well during the past few years in Victoria,” Mr Gout says.
“We have been working very quietly towards this moment since 2008 when we brought in the first wheat lines. While it’s quite easy to import canola seeds in large quantities, our quarantine regulations only permit us to import 50 seeds of any wheat variety at a time.
“So it took a lot of small steps to produce enough seeds even to set up trials let alone bulk up stock of the top performing varieties in Australian conditions to make them available in commercial quantities.”
The initial release will include the French bred quality wheat varieties Scenario and Ovalo, and the long-season, multi-purpose open pollinated canola, Brazzil, which can be grazed and then grown out for harvest. Another hybrid conventional canola, Sensation, currently RAGT’s leading hybrid variety will also be available in limited quantities in early 2013.
Mr Gout says more high yielding quality wheat and canola varieties are expected to be available in 2014, with barley, oats also being evaluated for future release.
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