Published since 1986
NOVEMBER, 2018
Dispersal sale breaks records
www.farmernews.com.au
Elmore field days wrap up PAGE 4
Drought from a woman’s perspective PAGE 18
PAGE 22
Shepparton producers scoop the maize pool 19.5 tonne Maize crop wins national award Ű
CSIRO STARTUP: New insect-monitoring technology startup, RapidAIM, is receiving a $1.25m boost to protect Australia from the world’s biggest biosecurity barrier to trade: the fruit fly, which costs Australia more than $300 million every year. Founded by researchers from Australia’s national science agency CSIRO – including (from left) Laura Jones, Nancy Schellhorn and Darren Moore from CSIRO’s Victorian office - RapidAIM provides real-time fruit fly detection and monitoring to help Australian producers battle against the devastating pest.
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X IFT CR L O R R AG OADE L 0 0 29
around $115/ML for Goulburn 1A, at the time equating to a total cost of $690/ha just for water. The award winning crop was sown at a rate of 95,000 seeds per hectare, following a vetch silage crop the season before. The area was then subbed up using the sub-surface drip irrigation before being strip tilled and directly planted to maize. Mr Hamono said one of the advantages of sub-surface irrigation was being able to apply nitrogen to the crop during the season to match demand, with a total of 270kg/ ha applied during the growing season. The nitrogen applications commenced after seeding, with approximately 39kg/ha of nitrogen applied fortnightly until tasselling. Mr Hamono typically targets 16 tonnes per hectare for maize across his entire property, which includes medium and short season varieties of grit and feed.
A MAIZE crop grown out of Shepparton has taken out a national award, with all three top placegetters from the same region. Ian and Mary Hamono from Cooma won the irrigated section of the National Maize Competition, with Craig Reynolds from Congupna and Kagome Farms from Rochester rounding out the top three. The Hamono family grew a crop of Pioneer hybrid P1467, which was yield tested at 19.54 tonnes per hectare and used just six megalitres per hectare of water throughout summer. “I had a pretty good inkling that I was right up there with the yield that I got,” Mr Hamono said. “It’s pretty neat – I was runner up last year, so I would have been really disappointed if I didn’t make the grade this year.” Each season, Mr Hamono carefully considers his cropping options for the area, irrigated via both sub-surface drip irrigation and pivot. During the 2017/18 season, the average price of water was
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