Agronomy and Crop Sciences Commons^™

Swathing Field Crops In The South-West, R Snowball

Journal of the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia, Series 4

Swathing is a long established method of haarvesting field crops, especially in parts of Europe and North America. It involves cutting the crop when the seed is nearly mature and laying it in a swath or windrow to dry. when the crop has dried it is harvested using conventional harvesting machinery with a pick-up attatchment.

On the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia, an area prone to strong moist sea breezes, swathing barley is a common practice. More farmers along Western Australia's south coast are also swathing barley to reduce losses from conventional harvesting. Pod shattering losses of lupins and field …

Row Spacing And Cereal Crop Yield, R N. Burch, M. W. Perry

Journal of the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia, Series 4

Cereal growers in western Australia have, traditionally, burned cereal stubbles. Burning stubble residues reduces weed seed populations and fungal pathogens, but its main purpose has been to eliminate straw which might cause blockages od seeding machinery and por see-bed preparation in the time critical seeding operation.

In 982, the Department of Agriculture began a project to determine whether wider spaced rows also depressed cereal yields in Western Australia. This article summarises some of the important results from that work.

Barley Breeding Update, P A. Portmann

Journal of the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia, Series 4

Barley production in Western Australia has increased over the past few years, peaking at 1.42 million tonnes in 1984. The European Economic Community, however, has flooded world markets for barley and over half of ourbarley was sold for feed to Saudi Arabia last year. Current prices therefore have declined as has the total area sown to barley in this State.

Despite this, the potential to increase barley yields is most promising. The Department of Agriculture has cross-bred lines in advanced stages of field testing which could increase yield by 10 per cent across the agricultural areas.

In the longer term, …