Australia
August 20, 2012

A crop of the HSR Seeds grain sorghum variety Enforcer has yielded almost 14 tonnes a hectare on a property near Dalby in south-eastern Queensland, grown entirely as a dryland crop without supplementary irrigation.

HSR Seeds area sales manager Arthur Salisbury said the yield came from a part of the paddock selected for weigh binning and entry into the Royal Agricultural Society of Queensland’s dryland crop competition, which showed a yield of 13.69 tonnes a hectare.

“Without doubt it was the best crop of sorghum I have ever seen and it really showed how a variety bred to perform will do so,” Mr Salisbury said.

“Enforcer is intended to maximise production in high-moisture situations, either through rain prior to and during the growing season, or under irrigation, pushing the yield opportunity from available moisture to the fullest extent.

“This variety is cold-tolerant, so despite being sown on 22 September last year it germinated well and the early sowing, combined with a midge resistance rating of six, meant midge was not an issue.

“Growing conditions were ideal with a full moisture profile on sowing and Enforcer has quite an open head so heliothis tend to leave it alone; then when it flowers it produces a large amount of viable pollen, which is what you want for reliability of yield,” Mr Salisbury said.

The crop was grown by John Alexander, about 25 km NNW of Dalby, in what he said was almost just an experiment.

“I’m relatively new to growing sorghum, so I wanted to try a variety that could make best use of the great moisture we had available in a good paddock. On paper and from what I’d heard, Enforcer seemed ideal,” Mr Alexander said.

“It was on a long fallow after a failed chickpea crop from the year before and in that situation the best I thought we might expect was around 7.5 to 10 tonnes a hectare, so when the section we are entering in the crop competition came in at 13.69 tonnes, I was just blown away.

“Across the whole 17 hectares I put in I think it yielded just over 11 tonnes to the hectare, which was spectacular enough – I’d never seen a crop like it – it tillered well, produced big heads and was reasonably easy to harvest.

“You want a variety that can make the fullest use of your conditions and clearly this one does that extremely well; yes, I will be using Enforcer again,” Mr Alexander said.

HSR Seeds has supplies of Enforcer seed available for the coming season and welcomes inquiry from growers or seed merchants for more detail about this variety.

Website: http://www.hsrseeds.com.au/

Published: August 20, 2012