New Australian- bred cotton varieties to benefit Queensland growers

Queensland cotton growers are set to reap the benefits of new locally-bred cotton varieties which have exceeded expectations in trials in the 2008-09 season.

Speaking last week at Cotton Seed Distributors’ (CSD) annual information tour throughout the Queensland cotton-growing regions, CSD agronomist James Quinn said Sicot 71BRF, which contains the Bollgard II® and Roundup Ready Flex® traits from Monsanto topped about 80 per cent of the trials which it was included.

“The CSIRO cotton breeding team told us this was a pretty special variety, so this past season we included it in over 30 trials across all regions, in fully-irrigated, skip-row irrigated, and dryland.”

“The results are outstanding – it’s out yielded all other Bollgard II Roundup Ready Flex varieties in almost all trials, including the dryland, and importantly maintained base or better fibre quality in all situations.”

“Sicot 71BRF was released in limited quantities this past season in a members ballot so most growers had the chance to try some. We haven’t heard a bad report yet and the highest yield is somewhere around 14 bales per hectare,” James Quinn said.

CSIRO cotton breeder Dr Warwick Stiller said the performance of Sicot 71BRF in its first commercial season matched the results seen in the variety’s development, but assured growers further improvements were on the way.

“Our next exciting development is line CSX323, which may be released as ‘Sicot 74BRF’. This line has shown to have up to five per cent yield improvement over Sicot 71BRF in the northern and western regions including central Queensland, St George and Mungindi.”

“We expect to see this variety in CSD trials in the 2009-10 season but not commercially available until the 2010 plant,” Dr Stiller said.

CSD General Manager Steve Ainsworth said there are ample quantities of Sicot 71BRF available for the upcoming planting season.

“We’ve had good seed crops of this variety and I’m happy to say that most of it is now safe in storage,” Steve Ainsworth said.

About 275 growers and industry personnel attended the series of meetings held throughout the Queensland growing regions, and continuing throughout NSW this week.

Details are available at www.csd.net.au