IMPROVING crop productivity and profitability from non-wetting soils is the aim of new research in Western Australia funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC).
GRDC western panel chairman Neil Young said the five-year projects, launched this spring, would include research by the Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia (DAFWA) and CSIRO.
“Non-wetting soils are a major production barrier for growers in many parts of the WA grainbelt, with an estimated 18 per cent of agricultural soils – or 3.3 million hectares – at high risk of water repellence,” he said.
“An additional 6.9 million ha of soils are at moderate risk of water repellence.
“Potential solutions need further investigation, with amelioration techniques such as spreading clay working well in the south coastal area of WA, but appearing not to work well in other cropping areas such as the West Midlands.”
Mr Young said one of the new research projects – ‘Delivering agronomic strategies for water repellent soils in WA’ – would work with a number of growers from Northampton to Albany, and would be led by Stephen Davies, of DAFWA.
“The aim of this project is to enable growers to identify their water repellent soils, choose which management option best suits their needs and is likely to be economically sensible,” he said.
Mr Young said the research aimed to provide increased knowledge about soil amelioration techniques such as the one-off use of rotary spaders and mouldboard ploughs.
These techniques were currently used by some growers in the northern agricultural region an attempt to improve non-wetting soils.
“Farmers using inversion tillage and spading in this region are often getting good short-term results, with plant populations more than doubling in some on-farm trials,” Mr Young said.
“But growers also recognise the really big risk of massive soil erosion that could result in the year the techniques are applied, and their long-term effects are not yet known.”
Mr Young said the research project ‘Novel solutions for managing non-wetting soils’, led by Margaret Roper of CSIRO, would complement the DAFWA research by exploring management techniques promoting water infiltration in to non-wetting soils.
“This project will build on previous research which found water repellence in acid sandy soils in southern cropping areas ‘disappeared’ under zero-till and stubble retention,” Mr Young said.
“These trials will be continued under the new project to confirm these results and identify mechanisms and strategies that can be applied to non-wetting soils elsewhere in WA as well as South Australia – where an additional trial is being established on the Eyre Peninsula.”
