SRA22A FACTS

All up the commercial release of SRA22A has been a two-year process and that’s not quick enough for some growers. They want to be straight out of the starting blocks with a new variety and so they purchase tissue culture seedlings from SRA direct – coordinated by SSP.

“The growers who purchased the tissue culture are a year ahead of us,” Doug said. “Which means, if you put your ear to the ground, you can generally tell how good the variety is going.

“A lot of growers will make a decision about a variety chatting about it around the back of a ute.”

Doug said the process on his own farm was to put a new variety into trial plots.

“FAT trials are good but that’s SRA’s own carefully ‘looked-after’ paddocks. It gets abused when we get hold of it,” Doug said laughing.

“We compare rows with our benchmark, Q183A . So, in one plot we’ve got SRA22A , Q183A, and then SRA21A .

“Q183A is close to a good allrounder but while it’s a good cane it’s also an old cane. We’re looking for something new because about a third of the district is growing it. That’s not a good position for disease control. We’re also phasing out some of our other canes like SP80 and Q240A .

“Smut is our biggest problem but we also have Pachymetra in some blocks. SRA22A is resistant to both. We think SRA22A will grow best on a medium soil type, on a sandy loam. I don’t think it will go well in our heavy soils nearer the creeks.”

Doug has discovered something interesting about SRA22A .

“When you’re cutting the cane out and you see what’s going in the bin you think ‘Oo, that’s going to be a lot of sugar’.

“The cane is quite squat, not as tall as others, but it’s got a good-sized stool and grows more stalks to the stool than a lot of varieties I’ve seen.

“It germinates quickly and well and there are no problems with ratoons.

“We planted in August this year because of the weather which means everything is behind. But while it sat still for about a month it’s now caught up with Q183A – they are running neck and neck.

“We expect to get four bins out of it at 100 tonnes/ha next season which will give us enough to send to the mill for the CCS rating.”

If the farmers don’t buy the cane from the distribution plot, Doug cuts it and uses it himself.

“We don’t like to waste it. We’ll put a little bit on all our farms and then at first ratoon we’ll send it to the mill.

“It’s too precious to waste. We put in all the varieties. You never know which one is going to be a real goer on your farm.”

Doug has SRA9A, SRA12A, SRA13A , SRA21A and SRA22A and Q183A on three of his farms.

“I’m a great salesman,” Doug laughs.

“I generally know when the growers tell me where they are from what their soil is like because we have our farms in those areas, too.

“The growers come out here to pick up one variety and I’ll sell them another two!”

SRA22A is a variety that is resistant to Pachymetra, smut and Fiji leaf gall.

It has intermediate resistance to leaf scald and is intermediate to red rot. In final assessment trials (FATs) it had equal TCH and high CCS when compared to current commercial cane varieties.

SRA22A was first released to

Central district growers in 2020. It achieved an overall performance of 89 after 2013 series FATs (2014, 2015 and 2016) and

2016 series FATs (2017, 2018 and 2019). This compares with Q208A of 86 and Q238A of 85.