Bordertown grower’s Hyola 580CT canola saving money on weed control

Bordertown grower Michael Hunt’s first season growing a dual tolerant canola hybrid has been a positive one, setting him up for cost savings due to increased weed control.

Mr Hunt, who runs a family farm and share farm with wife Coleen, son Josh and daughter-in-law Sammy, planted new Clearfield (CL) and triazine tolerant (TT) variety Hyola 580CT alongside open pollinated (OP) Bonito and found the weed control to be impressive.

“Although the gross margins were similar with the hybrid and OP, we’ll spend a lot less on weed control this season due to the reduced weed burden than if we just planted straight TTs,” he said.

Mr Hunt’s agronomist recommended Hyola 580CT to him to tackle problem ryegrass on one of his share farm paddocks.

“I have planted hybrids before without much success, but our agronomist Glen Mead at D&M Rural convinced us to make the right decision.

“With beans and TT canola, we’re probably using the same chemistry group too much, so it was good to use triazine to keep weed bank lower and then follow it up with Clearfield chemistry.”

He planted 28 hectares of Hyola 580CT and 80ha of Bonito on their share farm on April 26, with the hybrid going into bean stubble and the OP planted to durum wheat stubble.

Mr Hunt, who also grows wheat, barley, lupins, beans, lentils and lucerne, said it was one of the best seasons they’ve had despite receiving lower than average rainfall.

“We received 291mm of growing season rainfall and 316mm for the year, which is down on our average 338mm GSR and 470mm annual, but there were no big frosts and harvest went according to plan.”

They harvested on December 10, with canola yielding 2t/ha+ and wheat yielding over 4t/ha.

“The Hyola 580CT yielded 2.3t/ha, the Bonito yielded 2t/ha, the hard wheat was yielding 4.1t/ha and our durum went 4.5t/ha.

“The Hyola did have the better paddock due to a bit more nitrogen carryover and less ryegrass.”

Mr Hunt said he planned on sowing Hyola 580CT again this season.

“This is the first hybrid in a while that we’ll actually purchase again, so we’ll grow a couple of paddocks of it this year.”