NSW Winter crop variety sowing guide
Summary
Welcome to the 2024 edition of the Winter crop variety sowing guide. The aim of this guide is to help grain growers and their advisers make better cropping decisions to achieve more productive and profitable winter crops.
Profitable winter crop production depends on choosing the most suitable variety for each paddock and sowing time, optimising tactical crop management to achieve the chosen variety’s yield potential, and matching the end product of both variety choice and management to available markets.
Complex modern technology, fluctuating markets and the vagaries of seasonal conditions also affect the decision-making process, contributing to the winter crop producer’s need for careful planning and management to optimise productivity and profitability.
Carefully consider the range of information contained in this guide, how it can be applied to your farm business, and consult your local agronomist or farm adviser for more specific advice.
Crop variety performance data
The National Variety Trial (NVT) data presented in the Winter crop variety sowing guide are long-term multi-environment trial (MET) results. These results are currently the most accurate and reliable means of interpreting variety performance across sites and years The yearly regional mean values presented in the guide have been extracted from the NVT database and values are only shown for a variety when the variety was present at sites in that year. The yearly or regional mean values shown in the Winter crop variety sowing guide are not adjusted for trial accuracy but are filtered for VAF ≥25%. On the NVT website (www.nvtonline.com.au), within the ‘Long-term yield reporter’ web tool, you are able to filter on accuracy and VAF. The default accuracy and VAF values on the NVT long-term yield reporter web tool are set at ≥0.8 and ≥25% respectively. Users can change the default values of accuracy and VAF filters in the web tool, depending on their risk acceptance, using the slide tool option.
The regional mean yields shown in the guide are average varietal performances across trial locations within each year or region. This averaging can mask the variety by environment interaction; that is, the ability of a variety to yield differently at each location across seasons (years). For growers and agronomists wishing to further interrogate the NVT results on a variety’s performance across the state, go to NVT site. The ‘Long term yield reporter’ tool allows users to view data in yield-based groupings and/or seasonal outcome across states, regions or selected trials down to a single site level. You can also access individual trial results for 2023 by using the interactive map on the NVT website home page and selecting the site of interest.
