Longerenong Cropping Challenge

The Longerenong challenge gives local crop advisors the opportunity to put their agronomic skills on show by managing a crop within a three year cycle within a replicated experiment. Outcomes are assessed in terms of crop yield and gross margins. The plots were in canola in 2010, wheat in 2011, and chickpea in 2012. Despite a very dry season, chickpea crops yielded quite well with many above 2 t/ha, and the IPL team achieved the highest yield of 2.48 t/ha, which was similar to the yields of the crops managed by the Greenmachine (2.27 t/ha), the Raging Reds (2.24 t/ha), and the Longy students.

The highest gross margin - over A$1,000 per hectare went to the Longy Students, with the Raging Reds not far behind. Overall, these were great gross margins and reflect the careful selection of the variety and good management of the crop. Variety selection was important with the higher yield of Genesis90 in this experiment producing the top three gross margins.

The Colwell-P soil tests at the start of this crop phase were generally 30 to 40 mg/kg, which would be considered sufficient, or at least at maintenance levels, for this soil type, and the low fertilizer input resulted in reasonable yields for one group, but lower yields for another group. One group entered with a soil test Colwell-P value of 26 mg/kg, but this did not seem to adversely affect yields in this case. Chickpea is known to be able to access less available P pools in the soil when compared to cereals. ANZ-11