Mingenew grower adopts new wheat variety Havoc after trial

Mingenew farmer Paul Kelly is adding new wheat variety Havoc to his program this year after it topped his 2018 on-farm trial.

Mr Kelly runs 3106-hectare Edenvale Farms with his wife Sue and daughter Rebecca, while his other daughters Tara and Shaina work off-farm.

He planted a four-variety wheat trial in addition to his regular commercial crop, putting Havoc up against his regular varieties Scepter, Mace and Ninja. 

Each variety was sown to 11ha on their ‘Santa Fe’ property and each plot measured 1.2km.

He said the results were interesting, with the newcomer performing the best, the noodle wheat following next and one of his oldest

varieties coming last.

“The Havoc won on the day, yielding an average of 1.92t/ha.  Ninja went 1.81t/ha, Scepter went 1.68t/ha and Mace was 1.55t/ha.

“I harvested 24 tonnes off the Havoc, so I’ll keep it all for sowing this season and later down the track I can trade it with other farmers or sell it.

“It also had low screenings of two per cent and a good hectolitre weight of 79.2, though the entire crop across all varieties was low for protein this year.”

Mr Kelly said he plans to sow Havoc, Cobra and Scepter this year, replacing Ninja with a different noodle variety.

“I like to have two or three wheats going at once – I don’t like putting all my eggs in the one basket. If one variety fails due to rust or some other factor, you have something to fall back on.”

The crop was sown on June 1 in a paddock out of lupins and was harvested in late November.

He said while the season didn’t offer suitable rainfall, they were happy to get all the grain off and see reasonable yields.



“It was sown on good country, but it was a funny year. At the end of August, we thought we’d beat our big 2016 yield if we got 35mm of rain for September, but we only received 10mm. By the end of the season we were down 80mm on our long-term average, but overall, we’re happy enough with the season.”