AGRICULTURE Victoria is achieving great success in combating frost damage to the Wimmera’s crops through advancements in technology and plot trials.
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Horsham-based Agriculture Victoria senior regional research agronomist Dr James Nuttall said many projects were underway behind the scenes to help cut back losses for the Wimmera’s grain growers.
“One of our main areas is understating the effects of cold temperatures on a number of crops, including wheat and pulses, and looking at how cold actually affects the growth and yield of those crops,” he said.
“We’re also interested in being able to spatially detect where crop damage may have occurred in commercial paddocks.
“If we can do that rapidly, that will allow growers to actually have the tools to make rapid decisions of where that frost damage has occurred spatially in the paddock and the likelihood of whether that crop is still valuable.”
He said spatial mapping technology saved growers time and manual effort, and took objectivity out of the equation.
“Currently, it’s quite an arduous process going out to the paddocks and scouting to see where damage has occurred. So this puts a little bit more objectivity into the game,” he said.
“For the last couple of years we have been running small plot trials where we’re growing wheat and lentils and being able to impose artificial frosts using chambers in the field.
“Then we can look at the reflectance from those crops using remote senses and gauge if there are any indices out there that actually reflect damage due to frost.
“We’ve come up with a few key indices that potentially link frost damage to crops and we are now taking those indices to commercial paddocks to test whether they hold up.”
Dr Nuttall said the trials had support from growers across the region.
“We work with a range of agribusinesses and growers within the Wimmera to be able to assess some of their paddocks; there has been support locally particularly in places where frost is prominent,” he said.
“Frost is an ongoing issue from season-to-season, so obviously they see the value in being able to objectively measure where frost may have really hit their crops hard and then be able to make a precise decision of which zones they need to cut and which they want to maintain.”
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