Western Australia
August 25, 2014
Growers will have the opportunity to review a new approach to the selection of wheat varieties at this year’s Dowerin Field Days.
Department development officer Georgia Trainor said the new information, which is based on the Grains Research Development Corporation’s National Variety Trial (NVT) project, provided more detail on how the varieties had performed over a number of years in different environmental conditions.
“This means that it will be easier for farmers to see trends in each variety tested and decide for themselves which variety will suit their area,” Ms Trainor said.
“In previous years, data was only provided from a single site and from longer term summaries from the past five years. The predicted yield of each variety was presented as an average over each agzone.
“The new way of presenting the trial data provides a production value for the each of the past five years over a range of locations.”
Ms Trainor said an example of this was at trial sites in the northern agricultural region which showed Mace yielded better than a majority of varieties over a range of seasons and years.
“However, for other varieties such as Magenta, the environment had a big effect on its yield over a number of seasons,” she said.
Ms Trainor said more information would also be available sooner on the performance of newly released varieties in the environments that they had been tested in.
“This will enable growers to have more variety specific information to consider when selecting new varieties,” she said.
“This includes which varieties have had the most stable yields in a variety of environmental conditions and allow growers to compare the varieties’ performance in a range of trials across the State.”
Department staff will be available at the Dowerin Field Days to discuss the new approach to presenting NVT data and further information will also be available on the website https://agric.wa.gov.au/n/3587
Topics
Species
