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Early planting meant a variety had to have good cold tolerance, and that is what Bullock found that the Pioneer brand G22 hybrid sorghum brought to the table.
He first trialed 15 hectares of G22 on his family’s property between Kingsthorpe and Oakey in 2012, with the results inspiring him to grow it again the following year.
“We planted quite early and it handled the cold conditions a lot better than the other varieties we grew that season,” Bullock said.
“Based on that, we had an early plant again last year (2015/16 season) and due to the early cold conditions, every hectare we planted last year was G22.”
He planted about 650 hectares of G22 in 2015/16, which was their whole sorghum program, other than a 40 hectare trial of Pioneer brand G44 hybrid sorghum.
Last season’s G22 plant started on September 16, 2015, when the mornings were still cool and marginal moisture was available.
The Bullocks planted at 75,000 seeds per hectare with 50kg/ha of a starter fertiliser with the seed and 200 kg/ha of urea through separate fertiliser discs.
“We were pretty happy with the G22 all the way through the growing season, it was a good year in terms of getting rain when we needed it,” Bullock said.
“The first six weeks of the season we had a bit of dry weather, which G22 handled well, and then it rained a lot from November through to January.”
The Bullocks started spraying G22 on February 9 this year, with harvest starting nine days later.
“It was easy to harvest, and while the yield varied from paddock to paddock, overall we got a bit more than 7 t/ha over the whole lot, which I was pretty happy with,” he said.
Bullock said one block with more available fertiliser yielded over 8t/ha, showing the potential of the variety, although good yield wasn’t the only upside.
“Overall the grain sample was a very good quality red colour, and we ended up selling some into the birdseed market.
“The buyers had a few different samples from different growers. The end user chose our sample and the small premium was a bonus at the end of the season.”
