Sunmaster is wheat variety of choice for astute northern region farmers

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Sunmaster is an exceptional APH classified wheat variety for NSW and Queensland, with farmers experiencing yield advantages in line with the dominant results seen in the National Variety Trials.

Developed by Australian Grain Technologies (AGT), one of the foremost plant breeding companies in the country, Sunmaster is gaining a lot of attention and popularity among astute Australian farmers, and rightly so.

AGT Northern Region variety support manager, Douglas Lush, Dalby, described Sunmaster, with its high yield potential, sound disease resistance package and improved grain characteristics, as an exceptional wheat variety released by the northern breeding node of AGT.

Mr Lush said Sunmaster was released in 2020, and was now gaining wide acceptance throughout NSW and Queensland.

"Having been widely tested over the past five years in the National Variety Trials (NVT), Sunmaster has coped well in a range of environments and that helps it to be front of mind to a lot of growers across the whole farming region. The NVT MET analysis of the northern region has placed Sunmaster at the pinnacle of yield performance," he said.

"Sunmaster has also performed exceptionally well in sodic soil trials undertaken by AMPS research program."

Mr Lush said Sunmaster represented a big leap forward in grain yield for northern wheat varieties.

As the market leader in wheat genetics, Mr Lush said AGT was very excited about the success of Sunmaster and the high uptake by growers of the Australian Prime Hard variety.

"I've been talking to a lot of agronomists over the last couple of years, and more and more they are reporting that Sunmaster is doing particularly well, achieving higher yields, with lower screenings than its parent, Suntop," he said.

"Once you get into the main season sowing window, Sunmaster seems to be the variety that everybody is talking about and incorporating as part of their program."

Offering a significant yield jump over established varieties in the northern region, Sunmaster was developed by AGT wheat breeder, Dr Meiqin Lu, at the company's Northern Region wheat breeding node at Narrabri.

Mr Lush said Dr Lu leads a very successful breeding program and the Narrabri team had released many good varieties for the northern region, starting with the release of Suntop in 2012.

"Suntop forms the basis of a few of our dominant main season varieties in the northern region. Sunmaster, Sunblade CL Plus and Suncentral are gaining acceptance across NSW and throughout the wheat growing areas of Qld, but Sunmaster is proving to have a wider fit across a larger area," he said.

"We are seeing growers from central Qld through to southern NSW adopting Sunmaster as their main season variety of choice, which is testament to it's adaptation to different environments.

"It's yield performance has been exceptional and very reliable.

"When we released Sunmaster as a replacement for Suntop we identified an eight per cent yield advantage in AGT trials, after five years in NVT assessment Sunmaster has a 6.4pc yield advantage over Suntop, which is certainly a key feature of why it's been going so well, and growers are seeing that yield performance in their paddocks. And yield is driving the profitability of the farming sector.

"AGT is striving to enhance the profitability and the sustainability of farms and the farmers, to keep them doing what they do best."

Sunmaster certainly has the runs on the board and has been incorporated into the planting program for Liverpool Plains cereal grower, Tom Simson, on his 5263 hectare Premer property, The Plantation.

Originally growing Suntop, Mr Simson tried out Sunmaster in 2021, with it just edging out Suntop, in yield by 150kg, and in protein and screenings as well.

"I'm a big fan of both Sunmaster and Suntop as they seem to respond pretty well in our environment," he said.

"We grew 700ha of Sunmaster last year and it averaged 5.82 tonne/ha. It is a tough variety that can hold itself in both the dry and the wet, and has good protein performance for our farm.

"It is a very good late option for us coming into the back end of our planting window, and is better in a short fallow or double crop situation we feel."

Another grower impressed by Sunmaster is Bruce Watson, who farms 4000ha on Woodbine, at Parkes.

Mr Watson said he grew Sunmaster first in 2021, achieving an average yield of 6-7t/ha.

"In 2022 when all our seed was damaged due to a wet harvest, we did another seed increase, and in an even wetter year Sunmaster outperformed a similar variety by about 50pc, because of its disease package," he said.

"Last year we grew around 600ha of Sunmaster and it yielded 4t/ha, between APW and APH. Sunmaster will be the principal variety we will be planting again this year. It is a pretty good main season option for this area."

With attributes similar to Suntop, Mr Lush said Sunmaster had an excellent disease package, and could cope with disease pressures such as stripe rust, crown rot and root lesion nematodes.

"Sunmaster has the ability to maintain yield in the presence of those diseases, which are prevalent in the northern regions," he said.

"The rainfall in 2022 promoted good conditions for stripe rust to cycle quite quickly in wheat growing areas, so it did put a lot of pressure on varieties, but Sunmaster coped with that very well. Last year, there was a lot more crown rot pressure and again, Sunmaster coped well in that situation.

"We expect Sunmaster to dominate main season wheat sowing in the northern region, while AGT continues our efforts to release varieties to supersede Sunmaster."

This is branded content for Australian Grain Technologies