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Sorghum beats wheat as Queensland's most valuable cereal crop
There is plenty of sport around at the moment from The Ashes, to Le Tour de France, and Wimbledon but it is the results from Queensland paddocks that have exposed some very tough competition.
After a long battle, sorghum has taken the coveted title of Queensland's most valuable cereal crop.
Sorghum only just beat wheat and its production was estimated to be worth $432 million.
There are several entities involved in sorghum breeding; including the State Department of Agriculture, The Grains Research and Development Corporation, and Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation known as QAAFI.
QAAFI's Professor David Jordan, said there were a number of factors in the victory, not the least the weather.
"We were probably favoured by the climate really," he said.
"Wheat yields and area were down and it was a good year for sorghum and that's one of the great things about cropping in Queensland, that farmers have the opportunity to grow winter and summer crops."
Professor Jordan said he expects the competition to be very tight in the years to come.
"There was a time when wheat really dominated, but now we're seeing other crops like chickpea being grown in winter and using some of the area that would've previously been growing wheat."
The current success Queensland-bred sorghum is seeing comes after some 50 years of research and development, which Professor Jordan said he has been involved with for much of his working career.
"What we're reaping is the benefits of the work of those researchers for that period of time," he said.
"One of the things about agricultural research is it takes a long time between when you make some changes and when you start to see them in productivity and I think we're starting to see that now."
Professor Jordan said he rates the development of sorghum varieties with midge resistance as a big milestone.
"That freed up planting times for farmers and allowed them to plant when there was rain, rather than everyone having to plant at the same time, or risk problems with midge; that was the work of my predecessor Dr Bob Henzell and his team."
The focus for the sorghum improvement team, led by Professor Jordan, shifts to doing more with less water.
"Looking at things like root architecture, designing root systems for sorghum plants that access water deeper down in the profile, we're also looking at transpiration efficiency; that's the efficiency with which a plant uses water to make grain and there's quite a variation with sorghum for both those traits."
Professor Jordan said there are many developments in sorghum on the animal feed front, but science is pushing new boundaries in human consumption too and the grain has found popularity in the gluten-free movement as well as in Chinese alcohol production.
Source: ABC Rural News, Arlie Felton-Taylor, July 13th 2015
