Narrabri virtual field day
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Virtual Field Day at Narrabri campus

15 May 2020
Crop trial experiments from the comfort of your lounge room
Narrabri campus was ready to host a Summer Cropping Field Day at our research farm. Unfortunately, COVID-19 restrictions mean people are not able to visit the site. Our researchers, students and our collaborators have been busy moving the experimental trials and demonstrations online.

The University of Sydney was going to host a summer cropping field day in early May at our Narrabri Research Farm.  Since December, researchers, students and our collaborators have been tending to the experimental trials and demonstrations.

Unfortunately, COVID 19 restrictions means people are not able to visit the site, so we have made some short videos for you to watch.  Special thanks to the PenAgcon team (Mitch Cuell and Drew Penberthy) for all their help putting together this series of short videos so we could show you the crop trials from the comfort of your lounge room. 

Watch now -  Summer crop virtual field day at Narrabri

The  crop trials include;

  • A sorghum crop nitrogen trial which has been flown regularly by drones and multispectral/ thermal sensors to better predict nitrogen responses in crops using mapping.
  • A summer planting of chickpeas.  These chickpeas are coming into harvest, just as most growers would normally be getting ready to plant chickpeas. 
  • Sorghum variety trials from several companies.
  • A cover crop experiment using sunflowers, millet, radish and cowpea which aims to increase soil carbon sequestration.
  • Summer weed crop competition trials.
  • Dryland cotton demonstrations set up by the Dryland Cotton Research Association on herbicide tolerance, stubble management and cover cropping.
  • CSD dryland variety trial.

All these trials were planted in the middle of crippling drought but have enjoyed this summer’s rain. The expanded area of our operations enables us to undertake broader farming systems research, including the summer crop rotation crops in partnership with a wider variety of industry partners.

University of Sydney researchers involved: Associate Professor Guy Roth, Dr Angela Pattison, Dr David Gallacher, Dr Asad Shabbir, Associate Professor Michael Walsh, Associate Professor Stephen Cattle, Professor Alex McBratney, Associate Professor Brett Whelan, Professor Budiman Minasny and PhD students Ian Marang, Thomas O’Donoghue.

We would like to thank our collaborators and research funders including; PenAGcon, Dryland Cotton Research Association, CSD, CRDC, GRDC, ADAMA, Pioneer Seeds, Heritage Seeds, Pacific Seeds, S&W Seeds, and the Australian Government’s National Landcare Program (Smarter Farming Partnerships). We also thank our farm and technical staff for all their vital help.

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