FIVE centres of excellence and a network of focus farms will be established in high yield potential grain-growing environments across Australia as part of a major new investment by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC).
The GRDC's new five-year Hyper Yielding Crops initiative will push the economically attainable yield boundaries in a range of winter grain crops.
Starting next year and concluding in 2025, this national investment will build on the success of the GRDC's Hyper Yielding Cereals Project that has been conducted in Tasmania over the past four years.
The five centres of excellence will be an expansion from Tasmania to include key high yield potential dryland cropping areas of Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales.
Attached to each centre of excellence will be five focus farms (25 farms in total) and a lead grower network aimed at taking research and development learnings from small plot to paddock scale.
GRDC senior regional manager - south, Craig Ruchs, said the new investment was an evolution of the success of the Hyper Yielding Cereals Project investment, both in geographic reach and crop scope.
"The new investment will see a shift in focus from a feed grain cereal initiative to explore broader opportunities in wheat, barley and canola, as well as pulse crops, where appropriately adapted varieties warrant inclusion in the program," Mr Ruchs said.
"The Hyper Yielding Cereals Project, now in its final year, has successfully demonstrated that enormous opportunity exists to set new attainable yield targets in higher rainfall regions and provide growers with fresh impetus to boost production and profitability."
Mr Ruchs said the Hyper Yielding Cereals Project utilised a "seeing is believing" participatory research approach, with results being achieved in growers' own paddocks and local environments.
This same approach will underpin the new national investment.
"We hope this proven approach, combined with appropriate mentoring and agronomic support, will assist growers to move from intent to change, to implementation, providing the motivation, knowledge and ability to realise yield and profit opportunities," Mr Ruchs said.
"Through the new investment, high yield potential cultivars suited to local environments will be identified and the most appropriate agronomic management tactics - including paddock selection and preparation, canopy management, disease, weed and pest control, and crop nutrition strategies - will be explored to assist grower and adviser decision making.
"Growers will have the knowledge, ability and confidence required to advance their farming systems beyond the status quo."
Mr Ruchs said the new national investment and its targeted outcomes were strategically aligned with one of 30 GRDC Key Investment Targets recently developed to set the direction for future investment under the GRDC's Research, Development and Extension Plan.
He said they wanted to reduce the gap between the actual and potential grain yield through more informed and timely decision making on planting time, crop/variety choice, weed management, pest and disease control, and crop nutrition.
"The Hyper Yielding Crops initiative announced today aims to support growers in their endeavours to extract more from their farming systems by ticking all those boxes," Mr Ruchs said.
"It will help to address current risk and reward trade-offs to further reduce the gap between current yield benchmarks and the water-limited yield potential of the best adapted crop cultivars available to grain growers in high rainfall, long growing-season Australian cropping environments."
