STRATEGIC management of inputs and innovative disease control have combined with perfectly timed rain to deliver what is believed to be a record dryland wheat yield for the North Coast.
At the Dowley family's mixed farming enterprise on the Upper Clarence, with the harvest in full swing, the best paddock of Crusader wheat at "Tabulam Park" has yielded 7.19 tonnes a hectare, or 110t from 15.32ha.
The 125ha crop is on track to average between 5.8 and 6t/ha.
The result is also one of the best to come out of NSW this season, with the top performing inland wheat yields about 5t/ha but even those are few and far between.
Kendall Dowley and partner Kate Luly, with parents Allan and Janelle, planted the wheat on deep alluvial soils at "Tabulam Park", between Casino and Tenterfield, in the second week of June on marginal moisture.
Extreme nitrogen efficiency is always a strong part of their crop management but this year, having the flexibility to lift urea applications as the season improved paid off beautifully when 126mm of out-of-season rain arrived in late August.
The incredible turnaround in what started out as a "very dicey" crop, given the dry, has cemented the place of calculated management and "outside the square" thinking at "Tabulam Park".
"We had serious concerns at the start of winter," Kendall Dowley said.
"We rely on summer rainfall to get our winter crop through and we had just come through one of the driest summers on record.
"Wheat has been used more as a break crop in the past but its strength as a profitable standalone crop and the agronomic benefits it brings have made winter cropping equally important here now."
Northern Rivers croppers, for whom summer soybeans and maize is generally the main game, managed to get about 2000ha of wheat, barley and triticale in this season after several years of almost no winter cereal cropping due to wet autumn conditions.
Most are yielding relatively well, between 3t/ha and 4t/ha, although Norco agronomist at Casino Angus Legoe said there were a few out-of-the-ordinary yields like the Dowleys', given the excellent August rain.
"It's terrific to see some decent winter crops around here after the run of years where growers have not even been able to plant," he said.
Sown with a non-till disc planter on 30cm spacings, the Dowley wheat went into paddocks that had produced soybeans over summer.
The dry, and the prevalence of the insect pest lucerne crown borer which caused 30 per cent loss, made it a disappointing year for soybean yields.
The Dowleys strip tilled the country after the soybeans came off in a bid to destroy the habitat of the borer.
They left some areas in order to determine the effectiveness of the practice, and will trap populations via tents after the wheat harvest, but Mr Dowley estimates a habitat destruction rate of more than 50pc.
Yellow leaf spot and crown rot were non-existent, which the Dowleys put down to rotation crops. Chickpeas were grown last winter so it has been 18 months between wheat crops.
Shan Goodwin
Journalist for The Land on the North Coast.
Journalist for The Land on the North Coast.
