Mace has dominated plantings over recent years. However there are alternative varieties that warrant consideration or their continued use.
Before adopting a variety it is important to consider why you want to replace existing varieties, and if the new varieties meet your needs.
The variety snapshots provide details on the strengths and weaknesses, End point Royalty (EPR), maturity and licensee details of the top ten varieties sown in WA in 2014, new varieties released in the last three years and varieties which have regionally specific adaption (Table 1). More detailed information on disease resistance ratings and agronomic traits are provided in Tables 3 and 4.
Yield is an important criterion when selecting varieties. It is better to base your variety decision from five years of data than just one. To meet this need, an output of GRDC’s National Variety Trials (NVT) project is a unique production value–plus (PV–plus) for each variety, which is displayed graphically over time for each NVT location. This year PV’s will be based on analysis from NVT wheat trials grown in WA for the five year period of 2010–14.
By assessing the production value of a variety over time and in locations relevant to your business (Figure 2), you get an indication of:
How much more a variety is likely to yield tonnes per hectare (t/ha) compared to other varieties in that environment.
The stability of the variety over a number of locations and years within an agzone or region.
Figure 2: Example of display of production values from NVT’s in Mingenew (2010–14)
NVT’s Yield Tool will display production values (also referred to as B.L.U.P. – best linear unbiased predictor) to compare the performance of varieties relevant to your business and location (visit nvtonline.com.au). More details on production values were presented at the 2015 Crop Updates (visit giwa.org.au/2015-crop-update).
We have continued to provide the average predicted yields for an agzone (2010–14) (Table 2). This information is an average based on the trials in each agzone over the 5 year period.
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