Building resilience – break crop suitability across landscapes

FUNDER: SA Drought Hub

PROJECT MANAGER: Brendan Kupke, SARDI

TRIAL LOCATION: Adrian Bormann’s, Punthari

TIMEFRAME: One year – 2024-25

TRIAL OVERVIEW: 

Managing break crops across the landscape can be a balancing act. With many break crop options having an attractive $/t end point, the use of break crops in the cropping system has gained momentum in the last few years.

Understanding landscape volatility such as soil type, water holding capacity and frost are important variables to consider when making break crop decisions and improving resilience to tough conditions such as drought.

While the use of break crops in the rotation offers many benefits such as weed management and N fixation, they also pose several risks including high costs of inputs, establishment issues, sensitivity to drought, prone to frost, limited end use options, and fragile residual stubble/ground cover.

MPF is part of a project with Upper North Farming Systems and AIR EP where paddock scale demonstration sites have been established to share information about break crop options and agronomics.

The SARDI Waite Agronomy team will help conduct a paddock demonstration site of canola and lentils at Punthari. The aim of the demonstration is to highlight the benefits and risks of having either lentils or canola as a break crop across variable soil types. SARDI will monitor crop establishment, soil testing (deep N), in-crop monitoring, yield and economic analysis, ground cover/stubble residues and benefits for the following crop.

Pinion Advisory will complete economic analysis reports for each site at key decision making points in the season, investigating end use opportunities, harvest results and the flow-on effects for the following cropping year.