Group research manager Claire Browne will discuss the performance of wheat varieties during 2017 including the highest yielding and their agronomic package.

“Scepter, LRPB trojan, corack and beckom were the highest yielding varieties in the Mallee, while in the Wimmera, scepter, LRPB trojan, kord CL plus, corack and mace all perform well,” she said.

Scepter has been in the National Variety Trials program for three years and has shown that it is more than capable to adjust to both Wimmera and Mallee environments.

“Scepter can now rightfully be considered a very suitable and favoured variety for the Mallee,” Ms Browne said.

BCG senior researcher Kelly Angel and La Trobe University’s James Hunt will discuss results from the first year of the GRDC-funded ‘managing early sown wheat’ project, which aims to determine the suitability of long season wheat for the Wimmera and Mallee environment.

Ms Browne said winter wheat longsword  was in an early break trial at Hopetoun and the ‘managing early sown wheat’ trials were at Longerenong and Curyo.

“The results from the Longerenong and Curyo sites for longsword have resulted in some head scratching, with it failing to perform due to unexplained sterility in these instances,” she said.

Barley varieties and their agronomic management package will also feature on the program with BCG research officer Linda Walters presenting results and summarising the GRDC-funded ‘barley agronomy for the southern region’ project as it concludes in June after 10 years.

“Fathom, La Trobe, spartacus CL, rosalind, Hindmarsh and compass are consistently yielding the highest in the Mallee and Wimmera trials,” she said.

“Barley time of sowing trials this year also provided some interesting results considering the frost.”

Cereal and pulse disease pressure on varieties is a key consideration when contemplating changing varieties.

Agriculture Victoria’s plant pathologist Grant Hollaway and senior research agronomists in pulses Jason Brand will provide attendees with an understanding of what happened in 2017, and what they might expect to see in 2018 and appropriate disease management strategies moving forward.

The BCG Trials Review Day is a members only event.