Mitchell and researchers from FAR Australia and the University of Tasmania tested new irrigation layouts, reduced tillage, and bacterial nitrogen-fixers on his maize farm. The trials cut irrigation time and water use while exploring how variety choice, timing, and nitrogen levels affect yield and pest control.
Questions this video answers
Grain maize yields of 16 to 19 tonnes per hectare have a nutritional requirement of about 400 kg of N per hectare.
Researchers found that anything above 280 kg of N per hectare produced no significant yield difference.
Three years.
Irrigated discussion groups run by the Farming Systems Group; an economics component run by the University of Tasmania; and a research component run by FAR Australia.
Mitchell is a third-generation farmer at Colliamberley.
Chapters
As a maize grower, we're facing increasing input costs. Fertiliser, chemicals, seed, fuel is a big one for me and time grower Mitchell.
Wiseman tells a familiar story and while the challenges he faces may be universal, finding solutions requires a more targeted approach.
The Optimising Irrigated Grains investment linked three projects and the three components was the irrigated discussion groups run by the Farming systems group with a focus paddock. The second component was the economics component run by the University of Tasmania. And the third component was a research component run by FAR Australia. The grain maze research was one component of the Optimising Irrigated grains project.
The over objective of this three year GRDC investment was to look at the levers that farmers can pull to maximise the production of irrigated grains.
I'm a third generation farmer here in Colliamberley Here today we're on one of our farms. We're developing a new irrigation layout for us beds in bays further away from your traditional rice bank setup. I'm hoping to cut my irrigation time frame down. I'm hoping to cut down on the time it takes me to get around my irrigation each day and cut down water use. We've hosted a couple of field days with the local farmers to demonstrate how our corn system operates and what we're experimenting with. Trials irrigation layouts, reduced tillage and nutrition, which is bacteria nitrogen fixing for us.
It's been our first year with Mitch looking at using nutrition as an alternative source of N in his crop and we're still just waiting for the results for that to come in. But farmers have been looking at using animal manures and things like that as well. So chicken litter or cow manure. So that's very up and down depending on the price of urea.
So we've tried to reduce tillage with our corn. We haven't pulled up the traditional bed for our corn that we have the last 30 or 40 years to irrigate with. We've planted it flat, we're seeing it's not yielding any less. So I've saved a mountain of time and a mountain of fuel and a mountain of wear and tear on my tractor, which is great. And this nutrition product we trialled on some of our corn, we're seeing a positive yield increase where we trialled it, but more testing's required.
What's also come out of this investment is a good management guide for maize growers.
The key learnings in the maize management guide was around nutritional requirements. Grain maize yields of 16 to 19 tonnes per hectare has a nutritional requirement of about 400 kg of N per hectare. But researchers found that anything above 280 kg of N per hectare there was no significant yield difference. Every time you export a ton of grain from your property, you're actually exporting N as well. So there is definitely a minimum amount of N that needs to be required so that you're not mining N out of your soil. The four keys to maximizing grain yield production for maize is variety, selection, irrigation, and timing. The next one is nutrition, your N requirements, and the last one is pest control.
Maize for us is a fantastic rotation between our other crops. So the diversity, I think it's opening a conversation between farmers. It's starting a conversation to get away from accepting what was, should be and change is okay.
