Investment

The investment will deliver local development and extension to close the economic yield gap and maximise faming systems benefits from grain legume production. This will be achieved through the delivery of a hub and spoke model of delivery for grower-driven grain legume validation and demonstration trials across South Australian sub-regions to address these gaps.

Three major validation (hub) sites will focus on a combination of sub-regional grower driven D&E priorities and extension of new research learnings from aligned projects delivering a series of fully replicated trial designs.

Ten on farm demonstration (spoke) sites will focus on-farm with one to two simple trials at each site which may include full scale strip trials, and/or small demonstration plot trials driven by local grower D&E priorities from the scope of trial areas.

Trials undertaken as part of the investment will cater to the following scope of activities:

1. Economic impacts of grain legumes on farm profitability;
2. Disease management and integrated weed management strategies in grain legumes;
3. Flexible responses to emerging grower issues, primarily arising from the GRDC Grower Networks.

Other key components include the delivery of flexible extension activities linked to each of the sites, and monitoring and evaluation to benchmark and undertake some preliminary assessment of long-term impacts.