Author: Di Williams
Last saved by: Craig Bratby
Company: NSW Department of Primary Industries

MID SEASON RICE REVIEW 2010-2011

Hi, my name is Andrew Schipp and welcome to Industry & Investment’s Mid-Season Rice Review. I am going to give you a rundown on the rice season so far in South West New South Wales and then take you around the districts to introduce you to some of the District Agronomists and see some of the crops in other parts of the State.

The big news at the start of the season was water; finally enough of it to see a return to a more normal area of rice being planted. Rain set in, rivers rose and most of our major water storages filled and some of them even overflowed. Some southern farmers were tempted to sow early to take advantage of off- allocation water but most stuck to the proven, recommended sowing window. In comparison in the northern rice districts, the ongoing rain stalled seedbed preparation and had many growers struggling to get urea into the ground before fill up. We had our share of establishment issues, scattered reports of herbicide damage; slime because of the amount of organic matter and masses of ducks that proved difficult to move on. But as happens in most years, the rice eventually climbed out of the water and farmers breathed a collective sigh of relief. With the earliest crops starting to reach the critical panicle initiation stage at Christmas, I began our tour around the districts early in the New Year.

I caught up with John Smith at Norm Thomas’ farm over near Wakool.

 Farmers in John’s group had their own establishment issues. Snails for example and slime, blood worm also persisted longer than usual. High levels of organic matter were blamed for this. Varieties in this area were most commonly Quest or the new YRM69 with Reiziq and Amaroo and Jarrah making up the balance. Leading up to Christmas, a lot of crops started showing symptoms of yellowing-off; more than the typical mid-season yellowing we see each year. While the farmers in this area didn’t have as many difficulties applying their pre-sowing nitrogen, there was a general agreement that crops looked hungry coming up to the panicle initiation stage.

I asked John about the nitrogen uptake figures he had been receiving from tests that were coming in from crops from around his district. 

“Yes, so this year we’ve been finding very low nitrogen uptakes compared to what we would normally find. We been finding them much less than the Rice Check recommendations with numbers around 60 and 100 kg of nitrogen in the plant at PI and that’s almost been regardless of fertiliser application at sowing and the best sort of thought behind that is that it’s been related to the cold season that we have had so far”.

Next stop was the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area where I met Mary-Anne Latimore at Garry and Marg Nagey’s farm near Gogeldrie. 

Farmers in the MIA were almost finished a long and frustrating winter crop harvest. Rice crops in this area were looking good especially those sown in early October. Access to more water late in the season saw some later sown crops going into hastily prepared fields. Coupled with a cloudy and slightly cooler early November, these crops took a while to get going. Rain events made water-level management difficult and low levels of solar radiation also impacted. In Mary-Anne’s district Molinate, Taipan and Saturn were commonly used whereas in the Western Murray Valley, Viper was most common. Follow-up spraying with MCPA 250 or Basagran M60 is required for all programs to manage herbicide resistance and this is becoming increasingly hard as grapes, and now cotton, increase in area.

At this meeting farmers had the benefit of Brian Dunn’s experience to correctly identify the panicle initiation stage which signals the start of the ideal topdressing window. 

I asked Mary-Anne what important crop management decisions Garry & Marg will have to make over the next couple off weeks.

“Well this crop behind me is probably at panicle initiation- PI. It was sown in early October and we are now in the first week in January and in about two weeks time it will reach a stage called Microspore which is very sensitive to cold. So at this time of year we are looking at raising the water level so that if we do have any cold temperatures, the plants will be insulated against the cold.”

Over in the Coleambally irrigation area, crops were also reaching that important panicle initiation stage in the first couple of weeks of January. I caught up with District Agronomist, Kieran O’Keefe. 

Coleambally farmers were also winding up winter cereal harvest as storms again began to appear. Between 10 and 15 January all districts received heavy rain with Hay recording 120mm, one-third of their annual average.

For rice farmers the rain topped up bays at the same time as they were starting to notice and really begin to use water. The crop at the meeting’s host farm had already reached PI and had been top-dressed with urea at 125kg/ha. Rates of nitrogen for topdressing were on the minds of most farmers.

We met at Garry McMillan’s crop at Farm 48 over in Coleambally and I got Kieran’s impressions about the importance of the near-infrared test for managing nitrogen topdressing decisions.

“So I think it’s pretty important that we actually do the available test which is the Tissue Test which is a free test available to growers. The only thing that they have to put into it is  time but it actually gives you a really good indication of the nitrogen status in your crop so you can see what rate for topdressing and if anything,  people will actually waste urea -  they might top-dress and not get a response if their crop is already at the right nitrogen status”.

Otherwise we’re pretty well guessing the nitrogen rate, aren’t we?

“Yes and growers probably are conservative and just put on a little bit of nitrogen but in some cases crops probably don’t even respond at all because they’re  already at good nitrogen uptake levels.”

My final stop was down in the Murray Valley again where I met John Lacy, well known Agronomist with the rice industry for the past 30 years. John’s meeting in the Blighty district was scheduled for Tim Bradford’s farm but the same rain that had drenched Hay saw us move to the Blighty Pub.

“A lot of people said this year we were really pleased to see the old mid-season yellowing prior to Christmas… you know the old classic mid-season yellowing. Did a lot of you  have that in your crops? Oh well it doesn’t have to be cold so that just a phase when the rice is growing very quickly and it just can’t quite get as much nitrogen supply from the soil and just goes through very temporary nitrogen deficiency and we think that because of cooler temperatures this year that this has probably been exacerbated but some of the yellowist crops can end up being the greenest crops.”

Of the many topics discussed at Blighty farmers were keen to hear about temperatures and how that was shaping the crops so far.

“This is early October through to February. These are the maximum temperatures; these are the minimum temperatures, and if you can see it the average temperature is this black line going through there and the same for minimum. There’s the average – that sort of black line going through there and the green is this year. So we’ll just following the maximums so you can see the maximums are pretty well followed all the way through to late-November; a little bit above average in early-December; a drop in mid-December. At the end of December the average at the moment just varies slightly above average. If you look at the minimums you can see that the minimums almost exactly following the average until early-November. Believe it or not from mid-November through to early-December they are actually above average. Again there’s a dip in mid and late-December but at the moment a little bit is the fact of around about average at the moment. So what surprised the farmers in the other groups is that you look at the general establishment period the temperatures were around average.

A break in the weather let us get out of the pub and check out one of Tim’s crops located near the road. This crop had reached PI a couple of days earlier. John put it to the group to guess the PI topdressing rate. The range of answers varied by as much as 60kg/ha amongst the group. And this reinforces the value of the nitrogen test providing an accurate estimate for topdressing.

Well I hope you have enjoyed this edition of our Rice Review. Thanks for the District Agronomists for helping out and also thanks to the farmers for letting me visit their crops and also special thanks to Brett Wade for letting us use his crop as the background for this edition.