Ground Cover Issue 67 - March - April 2007
01.04.07
News - Lift in oat demand pushes research
By Melissa Marino
New varieties of oats with dwarf genes and rust resistance are being investigated in GRDC-funded projects, coinciding with increased grower interest and export demand for the crop.
Dr Pamela Zwer, lead breeder for the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) national oats breeding program, says there has been a resurgence of interest in oats as export hay demand grows and consumers increasingly seek the types of health benefits oats provide, such as lowering cholesterol.
[Photo (left): The new high-yielding variety Wintaroo
for south-eastern Australia]
With no effective stem-rust-resistance genes left in cultivated oats, Dr Zwer is supervising a new GRDC-funded project, being undertaken by SARDI's Dr Phil Davies and world-respected cytogeneticist Dr Taing Aung, to incorporate new sources of stem and leaf-rust resistance from wild oats species into farmed varieties. One hundred wild oat species have been sourced from Wales for the project, which is due for completion in 2009.
Meanwhile, in Western Australia two new dwarf varieties of milling-quality oats and three new hay varieties, developed by the National Oat Breeding Program for south-eastern Australia, are being assessed for their suitability to conditions there.
The GRDC-funded research, led by Dr Raj Malik and Blakely Paynter of the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia (DAFWA), aims to boost knowledge and provide management guidelines for new milling oats and hay production in the west.
The dwarf milling varieties - Possum and Mitika - have the potential to offer growers increased yields and improved agronomy, and have been positively received in the south-east.
Findings in the west indicate Kojonup - a new high-yielding dwarf variety released in WA - is consistently high-yielding with good stability across years, locations, dates of seeding and soil types, with the potential to yield similar to the best feed-oat varieties such as Wandering and Dalyup.
But results also indicate that where less than 200 millimetres of in-crop rainfall is expected, Kojonup may not be the best variety to maximise grain yield. The results of commercial evaluation trials to determine the milling status of Kojonup in WA are expected to be announced before seeding in May 2007.
The project also shows yields of the new hay varieties originally released for south-eastern Australia - Wintaroo, Brusher and Kangaroo - were higher than traditional WA varieties Carrolup and Wandering, but did not always meet target quality standards. While Wintaroo returned the highest hay yield, it was slightly lower in quality than other varieties in the study.
Growers have found oats to be useful as a break crop, and the gross margins from producing top-quality oat hay are among the best, Dr Zwer says. But growing high-quality oat hay is a high-risk crop due to the potential for weather damage. Dr Zwer says priorities for the National Oats Breeding Program include breeding hay varieties for varying flowering times - that is, spreading the maturing time to minimise the risk of weather damage.
DAFWA's oat industry development officer Kellie Winfield says interest in the oat industry has grown considerably since the inception of the research project there in 2004.
Membership of the Western Oat Alliance has tripled, production of hay doubled to nearly 40 per cent of the acreage sown to oats, new export markets have emerged and grain markets increased from 150,000 tonnes to more than 230,000t, she says. "Oats have always had a role in the farming system, albeit as a 'back paddock' crop often planted as a last priority, but growers are now seeing the potential for high returns, particularly for export hay."
GRDC Research Code DAS00039
More information: Pamela Zwer, 08 8303 9485, zwer.pamela@saugov.sa.gov.au; Blakely Paynter, 08 9690 2115, bpaynter@agric.wa.gov.au
Varieties displaying this symbol beside them are protected under the Plant Breeders Rights Act 1994.
