Picking About to Start at Thallon

The team at ’Bullamon Plains’, Thallon, will start picking cotton this week but don’t expect to finish for another 7 weeks, despite having only 350 hectares planted.

Their situation is like many across the industry this season who ‘punted’ small areas early in the season, then planted further acres later as water became available in mid-November.

‘Bullamon Plains’, owned by the Willis family, planted 86 hectares of conventional cotton in late September using a small amount of irrigation water left after the winter crop. At the time of planting there was no water for any further irrigation.

In mid-November there was a small flow in the Moonie River, securing irrigation water for the small planted area of cotton and allowing the opportunity to ‘punt’ a further 260 hectares of Bollgard II®/ Roundup Ready cotton.

The ‘punt’ paid off when another flow in the Moonie in mid-January secured enough water to finish all the cotton area plus enough to for some winter crop.

The early planted field of conventional cotton is one of the only non-Bollgard II crops planted in the district this season, and according to Bullamon Plains cotton manager Von Warner, it’s looking very promising despite some challenges during the season.

“We had a lot of insect pressure early in the season but by early February it stopped so we ended up with 13 sprays. The crop was irrigated only four times, about half as much as last year.

“We planted some Sicot 71 and the new Sicot 75, plus a Cotton Seed Distributors variety trial”, Mr Warner said.

CSD agronomist David Kelly said these variety trials were incredibly important, despite only relatively small areas of conventional varieties being grown commercially.

“This trial contains the three leading full-season commercial conventional varieties Sicot 71, Sicot 75 and Sicot 81, plus a number of experimental lines with combinations of yield, fibre quality, disease resistance and heat tolerance—important attributes for western regions.

“While we may not see these lines released as commercial conventional varieties, CSIRO has them incorporated in its transgenic program”, Mr Kelly said.

In the mid-November planted crop, the quick maturing Sicala 60BR was grown, using CSD’s 2008 Limited Water Pack, which allowed a rebate on any crop that was removed.

Von Warner said they knew this crop would be very late in maturing due to the late planting date, but it was delayed even further by several incidences of herbicide drift.

“We probably won’t start picking it until the end of May, depending on the weather of course”, Mr Warner said.