Seed row placement relative to the previous crop stubble row can harness systems benefits on water repellent sands

Therese McBeath; Vadakattu Gupta; Jack Desbiolles; Bill Davoren; Rick Llewellyn

doi:10.1071/CP23157

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Previous Next Contents Vol 75(1)

Seed row placement relative to the previous crop stubble row can harness systems benefits on water repellent sands

Therese McBeath

^A ^* , Vadakattu Gupta ^A , Jack Desbiolles ^B , Bill Davoren ^A and Rick Llewellyn ^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A CSIRO Agriculture and Food, Locked Bag 2, Glen Osmond, SA 5064, Australia.

^B Agricultural Machinery Research and Design Centre, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: therese.mcbeath@csiro.au

Handling Editor: Roger Armstrong

Crop & Pasture Science 75, CP23157 https://doi.org/10.1071/CP23157

Submitted: 2 June 2023 Accepted: 28 July 2023 Published: 18 August 2023

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC)

Abstract

Context

Innovations to improve crop establishment are critical to unlocking the full potential of early sown winter cereal cropping systems.

Aims

The aim of this set of experiments was to evaluate the systems benefits of near-row sowing treatments for surface soil water, crop establishment, crop competition with weeds, root disease infection and cereal crop yield on sandy soils in low-rainfall environments.

Methods

Six of the 10 site–years evaluated were on water repellent sands with the remainder on sand and loam. A second set of experiments on a water repellent sand evaluated if furrow applied amendments to increase soil fertility in the crop row might generate additional benefits to the near-row sowing effect.

Key results

Significant grain yield benefits from near-row placement (up to 30%) were measured in 2 site years and these were associated with crop establishment gains, improved access to furrow soil water storage and weed seed reductions, which occurred in 3 site years. In a water repellent sand, near-row placement combined with extra nutrition input generated an additional grain yield benefit (+0.4 t/ha), as did a one-off 22 cm deep furrow tilling treatment designed to bring deeper soil moisture into the seed zone (+0.4 t/ha).

Conclusions

Near-row placement of crop seeds can provide systems benefits in water repellent sands. The conversion of these benefits to yield benefits occurred in 30% of site-years tested on repellent sand.

Implications

Further innovation is required to ensure that these seeder-based innovations generate predictable responses and scaled up evaluation is necessary to fully understand the systems and landscape level benefits of improved crop establishment in soils that often suffer low and uneven crop establishment numbers.

Keywords: crop establishment, edge row, integrated weed management, nutrition, soilborne diseases, soil fertility, sowing, water repellency.

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