Wheat and barley variety update 2018

Take home messages

Across a wide sowing date range and mostly very dry and frosty seasonal weather conditions, mid-season maturing wheat and barley varieties were generally most dominant in 2018.
Vixen (Australian Hard (AH)), Scepter (AH), Beckom (AH), LRPB Arrow (AH) and the Clearfield® varieties, Razor CL Plus (Australian Standard White (ASW)) and Sheriff CL Plus (Australian Premium White (APW)), led Mace, and were the highest yielding varieties across 2018 SA wheat National Variety Trial (NVT) sites.
Rosalind, Fathom, Buff and RGT Planet led Compass and were the highest yielding varieties across 2018 SA barley NVT sites.
Long term results at a local level, found at ww.nvtonline.com.au, will provide the most reliable yield information to guide choice of variety for a particular farming system.

2018 Seasonal overview for cereal NVT

Much like 2017, the 2018 cropping season began with an erratic opening break for most districts with limited opportunities to sow early into adequate moisture and very delayed germination in many dry sown situations. Extremely low rainfall in most districts, except the South East, continued through winter and into spring and was combined with severe frost (stem and head) events during late August and September and into early October, particularly within districts which rarely see these events. Strong winds in late September and early October further impacted crop growth through grain shattering and lodging. On a more positive note, incidence of cereal disease was very low with some Septoria noted within the high rainfall South East district. Despite the very challenging season in many SA districts and the confounding issues across districts, the majority of cereal NVTs produced good results and provided the opportunity to assess many of the newer varieties under diverse, albeit mostly drier seasonal conditions.

Wheat NVT

The light and erratic opening rains impacted the NVT program, preventing the opportunity to sow ’early break’ wheat trials, except for a long season trial in the South East. Otherwise for main season trials, sowing dates ranged from 8 May at Piednippie to 20 June at Penong with most trials sown in the second half of May. Individual wheat NVT site yields ranged from 0.31t/ha at Mitchellville to 7.3t/ha at Conmurra in the South East with an average of 2.92t/ha across the 19 successful main season trials, slightly above the 2.72t/ha average in 2017, but below the 5-year (2013-2017) average of 3.30t/ha.

Trial variability, severe drought conditions and frost resulted in the failure of trials at Kimba, Pinnaroo, Nangari, Wanbi, Palmer, Spalding and Wokurna. The results from these sites were considered invalid for ‘head to head’ variety comparisons, but for transparency, are available in a ‘Quarantined Trials Report’.

All other trials returned statistically acceptable results and regional mean yield data is shown in Table 1.

A total of 38 commercial wheat varieties and 19 breeding lines were evaluated in the SA main season NVT series. Overall, the 2018 seasonal conditions tended to favour early to mid maturing varieties with Vixen, ScepterA, Beckom, Cobalt, LRPB Arrow, Razor CL Plus and Sheriff CL Plus, respectively, leading all other varieties, including Mace, tested at all sites. Many of these leading varieties have only been released in the past 12 months or more and while it is useful to see their performance in a difficult year such as 2018, longer term comparisons including their quality and disease resistance characteristics need to be considered by growers considering a change to them. Of particular interest will be the new Clearfield® varieties, Razor CL PlusA and Sheriff CL PlusA which potentially offer much higher yields and a range of alternative agronomic characteristics, albeit lower market quality classification, relative to the older commercial varieties, Grenade CL Plus and Kord CL Plus.

Durum wheat NVT

Severe frosting at the Wokurna and Spalding durum NVT reduced the useful data emerging from 2018, but the remaining four sites through the Mid North and Yorke Peninsula yielded an average 3.08t/ha across the 17 varieties tested. Following similar results to 2017, DBA-Aurora, Saintly and DBA Vittaroi were among the leading varieties across sites, but the now older variety, WID802 led all varieties when averaged across the four sites.

Barley NVT

Within the main season 2018 barley NVT, sowing dates ranged from 8 May at Piednippie to 26 June at Darke Peak with most trials sown in the second half of May. Individual barley NVT site yields ranged from 0.84t/ha at Lameroo to 7.07t/ha at Maitland on the Yorke Peninsula with an average of 3.66t/ha across the 15 successful main season trials, well below the 4.37t/ha average in 2017 and below the 5-year (2013-2017) average of 4.04t/ha.

Trial variability, severe drought conditions and frost resulted in the failure of trials at Crystal Brook, Paruna and Wharminda. The results from these sites were considered invalid for ‘head to head’ variety comparisons, but for transparency, most results are available in a ‘Quarantined Trials Report’. All other trials returned statistically acceptable results and regional mean yield data is shown in Table 2.

A total of 35 commercial barley varieties and 15 breeding lines were evaluated in the SA main season NVT series. Overall, the 2018 seasonal conditions tended to favour early to mid maturing varieties but across all sites, only six per cent difference in yield separated the top 12 varieties. Rosalind, Fathom, Buff, RGT Planet and Compass were the leading varieties, respectively, followed by Hindmarsh, La Trobe and Spartacus CL. With the exception of Buff, a recent release with acid soil tolerance, this group of varieties have generally been among the best performers in SA barley NVT across recent seasons.

The relative grain yield of selected commercial varieties in 2018 NVT is summarised in Tables 1 and 2. The grain yield for each variety is expressed as a percentage of the regional individual trial mean yields. While these mean values are a guide to the general performance of varieties across the state in 2018, results in individual sites and seasons do vary and this detail can be better explored through NVT long term results reports. Note that long term results found on the NVT website are derived from a Multi-Environment Trial (MET) analysis which incorporates all southern trial data for the past five years and therefore, gives the best indication of relative varietal performance.

Interpreting long term yield data and NVT new developmentsThe long term yield data presented in annually published crop sowing guides is an output of the new NVT long term MET analysis and use a minimum five-year rolling dataset in the MET analysis.

A factor analytic (FA) mixed model approach is used in the MET analysis drawing on expertise from the GRDC supported Statistics for the Australian Grains Industry (SAGI) program. This approach uses raw plot data to simultaneously model the individual trial variation and the variety by environment interactions (VEI) observed across years and geographical locations to develop the NVT long term variety by environment predictions. In this way, NVT long term predictions better exploit the true power that exists within the NVT database, which now encompasses more than 8,000 individual trials.

To gain the full benefit of these world leading statistical outputs, users should study variety rankings across locations and seasons relevant to their farming system. However, presenting this level of detail is difficult within hardcopy publications, which are left needing to average across regions and/or yield groupings. Averaging does simplify the data and allows for broad sweeping generalisations, but also actually masks variety performance comparisons that might otherwise be observed for specific environments, effectively undoing the sophistication of the new analysis.

To overcome this challenge, the NVT team has continued to develop a simple web tool for viewing the vast datasets encountered in the NVT system.

When using the tool, the results are most accurate and reliable when viewed at the individual location (site) level, but the option is still provided for regional or multi-site selections for ease of use and/or more generic interpretations. In addition, users can still choose to view data on Year or Yield based groupings, both in chart or table format and they can also filter wheat varieties by delivery classification.

Future outlook for NVT

With the increased sophistication afforded by the latest analytical and reporting techniques, an opportunity now exists to help growers understand and interpret the VEI observed in NVT. In particular, research to better explain the environmental drivers of variety performance will assist growers more easily relate NVT results to their growing environment(s).

Finally, the wide range of variety trait information made available through NVT supports more considered variety selection decisions, but again adds complexity. To enable growers to more easily navigate the selection process, the NVT team is investigating options for growers to select their user preferences with regard to sites, varieties and traits of interest.

Table 1. Mean grain yield (%) from 2018 SA Wheat NVT. Yield expressed as a function (%) of region trials mean yield is shown for each region. The three highest ranked varieties in each region are highlighted in bold (varieties omitted from means were not tested at all locations, varieties listed in alphabetical order within southern zone classification grade, # trials in italics).

Grade	Variety	Upper Eyre P	Lower Eyre P	Mid North	Yorke Pen	Murray Mallee	South East
AH	Axe	95	60	103		91
AH	Beckom	104	103	107	106	101	108
AH	Cosmick	100	103	97	94	98	97
AH	Cutlass	99	103	96	102	99	96
AH	DS Darwin		93	89	96	93	99
AH	Emu Rock	95	100	104	103	97	96
AH	Gladius	99	94	95	95	98	93
AH	Grenade CL Plus	96	92	95	97	87	93
AH	Kord CL Plus	99	94	98	96	96	90
AH	LRPB Arrow	102	102	106	104	103	103
AH	LRPB Cobra	95	100	96	101	96	104
AH	LRPB Havoc	108	103	106	99	94	100
AH	LRPB Phantom			91	98	97	99
AH	LRPB Scout	89	96	102	104	100	98
AH	Mace	107	100	105	100	101	102
AH	Scepter	112	113	114	107	108	108
AH	Shield	93	95	96	99	95	89
AH	Tungsten			95	99		96
AH	Vixen	107	114	118	107	108	111
AH	Wallup	92	90	96	92	87	95
AH	Yitpi	98	93	96	101	96	90
APW	Chief CL Plus	105	103	106	96	90	100
APW	Cobalt	103	107	100	99	108	105
APW	Corack	103	104	108	96	103	101
APW	DS Pascal		88	85	93		99
APW	Estoc	95	94	101	100	98	94
APW	LRPB Trojan	103	100	96	105	100	102
APW	Sheriff CL Plus	102	106	103	104	99	104
APW	Wyalkatchem	99	101	104	102	97	97
ASW	Razor CL Plus	101	98	105	106	110	103
Feed	LRPB Beaufort						108
Feed	RGT Zanzibar			83			108
Feed	Zen		107	104	102
	Region Mean (t/ha)	1.31(6)	3.65(3)	2.70(2)	3.94(3)	2.06(2)	5.11(3)
DR	Caparoi			95	97
DR	DBA Bindaroi			95	98
DR	DBA Spes			110	101
DR	DBA Vittaroi			105	103
DR	DBA-Aurora			113	104
DR	Hyperno			107	97
DR	Saintly			111	102
DR	Tjilkuri			102	102
DR	WID802			112	108
	Region Mean (t/ha) (t/ha)			1.83(2)	4.34(2)

Table 2. Mean grain yield (%) from 2018 SA Barley NVT. Yield expressed as a function (%) of region trials mean yield is shown for each region. The three highest ranked varieties in each region are highlighted in bold (varieties omitted from means were not tested at all locations, varieties listed in alphabetical order within classification, # trials in italics).

Grade	Variety	Upper Eyre P	Lower Eyre P	Mid North	Yorke Pen	Murray Mallee	South East
		4	2	2	4	2	2
M	Bass	85	95	103	99	90	100
M	Charger			100	103		98
M	Commander	98	100	99	99	91	100
M	Compass	107	98	119	102	102	102
M	Flinders		99	92	95		95
M	Gairdner		88	80	90
M	Granger		99	83	98		99
M	La Trobe	106	102	116	99	102	100
M	Scope	93	91	98	98	94	97
M	Spartacus CL	104	102	118	99	97	101
M	Westminster						89
Food	Hindmarsh	104	103	119	99	101	100
F*	Alestar	82	95	83	95		99
F*	Banks	94	102	101	105	107	101
F*	Buff	107	103	113	103	111	99
F*	Explorer			88	100		102
F*	Maltstar	84	98	85	98		100
F*	RGT Planet	89	108	96	109	100	107
F	Charles			94	99		94
F	Fathom	113	101	119	106	105	103
F	Fatima			92	101		103
F	Fleet	105	96	111	105	98	96
F	Keel	107	95	111	100	93	94
F	Oxford		97	70	97	94	102
F	Rosalind	105	110	112	108	99	103
F	Sunshine			92	98		97
F	Topstart	67	101	67	95		99
F	Traveler		90	85	96	80	95
	Region mean (t/ha)	2.18	5.94	2.53	4.59	2.00	5.31

Grade: M=malt, F=feed, F*= feed pending malt evaluation and accreditation.

Acknowledgements

The research undertaken as part of this project is made possible by the significant contributions of growers through both trial cooperation and the support of the GRDC – the author would like to thank them for their continued support.

Contact details

Rob Wheeler
GRDC
187 Fullarton Rd, Dulwich SA 5065
rob.wheeler@grdc.com.au

GRDC Project Code: DAS00163,

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