Southern Pulse Agronomy

Southern Pulse Agronomy - Victoria delivers localised development trials and extension activities to close the economic yield gap and maximise faming systems benefits from pulses (lentil, faba bean, chickpea, field pea, vetch and lupin) production. To do this a hub and spoke model of grower-driven validation and demonstration trials has been implemented. There are 3 major validation ‘HUB’ sites and 6 on farm demonstration ‘SPOKE’ sites (Figure 1). ‘HUB’ sites 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 trials. ‘SPOKE’ sites 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. Trials align with 3 broad categories: 1. Economic impacts of pulses on farm profitability. 2. Disease and integrated weed management in pulses. 3. Flexible responses to emerging grower issues.

Research findings are delivered through flexible extension activities linked to each of the sites, including field days and crop walks and through the development of a new digital extension hub https://spahub. com.au/ (under construction) providing the latest photos, videos and results.

FIELD DAY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Research funding: GRDC and Agriculture Victoria. Research partners: Frontier Farming, Southern Farming systems, Field Applied Research, BCG, Meaningful Social Research. Land for research trials: Jade Lowe - Grower. Simon Mock - Agronomist Technical and Research Staff: Jason Ellifson, Tyler Coutts, Ash Purdue and Russel Argall. Field Day Support: Mallee Sustainable Farming.