Pulses Help Maintain Wheat Protein
DONALD- May 10/02 - STAT -- Wheat protein levels in Western Australia's Esperance Port Zone have declined an average 0.5% during the past seven years, resulting in a $4 million reduction in annual average incomes says the state agriculture department.
The decline in protein directly results from a slight reduction in emphasis on pulses in crop rotations and the failure of growers to replace the nitrogen those crops would have pumped into the soil with purchases of commercial fertilizer, suggests senior development officer Jeremy Lemon.
"Farmers need to develop greater skills to understand and manage protein levels in grain in order to optimize farm returns from grain cropping," Lemon said. "Crops need to meet their specific target protein in order to achieve best returns for the commodity. Penalties apply for grain that is outside the optimum specifications."
Working with farmers to tackle this issue, TOPCROP West was conducting a state-wide wheat protein focus this year.
"Several growers in TOPCROP groups across the state are setting up simple demonstrations of nitrogen fertilizer rates to achieve a range of target yields and protein. These are being set up on farm scale plots after seeding. The plots can be monitored by the grower to track tiller production and survival, together with the final grain yields and protein, to assess the agronomic and economic performance of the rates of fertilizer applied," he said.
Lemon said the wet break to the season in many parts of the state had lifted the prospects of good crops this year. Increased crop yield expected also increased the demand for nitrogen to achieve that yield and maintain protein levels in cereal grain.
"With increasing grain yield and less frequent legume years in many farming systems there is a much higher demand for nitrogen fertilizer than in more traditional farming systems."
Lemon said there was a range of nitrogen fertilizer tools available to estimate the amount of nitrogen required for a crop.
The Nitrogen Calculator released by TOPCROP several years ago was a valuable tool for estimating cereal nitrogen fertilizer needs and for barley there was the recently released Rite Nitrogen slide rule.
"While tools are developed to be applicable over a wide range of soils and conditions they need to be tested in your local environment for fine tuning and adjustment so they can be even more effective", Lemon said.
Farmers conducting a Protein Focus demonstration would have the opportunity to measure the effect of tailored nitrogen fertilizer rates and have an economic assessment of the inputs on their own farm.
Lemon said the information generated from the demonstrations would illustrate the issues that are involved in managing protein levels in wheat.
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