Nutrition Packages for Wheat on Sands

Authors: Therese McBeath¹, Rick Llewellyn¹, Vadakattu Gupta¹, Michael Moodie², Bill Davoren¹, Willie Shoobridge¹, Todd McDonald² and Mick Brady²

¹CSIRO Agriculture & Food Waite Campus, ²Mallee Sustainable Farming

Funded By: GRDC Stubble Initiative MSF00003

Peer Review: Sean Mason (Agronomy Solutions), Sarah Noack (Hart Fieldsite), Jake Giles (SARDI)

Key Words: nutrition, wheat, sandy soils, sands

Key Messages

• Good early nitrogen nutrition remains a key driver of yield in Mallee soils and penalties can occur with delays in applications to first node.
• Previously observed benefits of improved N use efficiency where Zn is supplied with the N were not captured in the 2017 season.
• Wheat fertilised with DAP placed with seed yielded 0.5 t/ha (20%) less than wheat with DAP placed below seed in 2017 at Loxton but had no effect at Karoonda.
• Using 50 kg DAP/ha with the seed and 35 kg Urea/ha deep was better than 50 kg DAP/ha and 35 kg Urea/ha all below the seed on sand at Loxton.