Wheat Grown Without Cultivation

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31316, 11 March 1967, Page 8

Wheat Grown Without Cultivation

Readers will recall an item on these pages recently describing trials in the Darfield and Rakaia districts in which wheat was being grown following differing cultivation and chemical treatments, including direct drilling without previous cultivation. Estimates of the yields of wheat obtained under these differing treatments have now been made.

Mr R. Taylor, an agricultural research officer of Imperial Chemical Industries (N.Z.), Ltd., who conducted these trials, says that on the property of Mr R. L. Bennetts, at Kimberley, the yield of wheat after normal cultivation was 69 bushels an acre, and where paraquat was applied before ploughing, 84 bushels to the acre. The yield of direct-drilled wheat varied from 48 bushels an acre, where no nitrogen was

applied, to 61 bushels to the acre where 3cwt of calcium ammonium nitrate was applied in the spring. Because of the lay-out of the trial, Mr Taylor says that comparisons between the yields on the direct-drilled trial and the cultivated area nd between the two cultivated treatments are not very reliable. The results suggest, however, that the recovery of browntop on the direct-drilled area depressed yield and that

straying before ploughing increased yield. It will be remembered that this trial was in a paddock that was formerly a brown-top-dominant sward. In the trial at Rakaia, where wheat was directdrilled into rape stubble after the application of paraquat, yields were about 30 bushels an acre where no nitrogen was applied. The application of Ifcwt of calcium ammonium nitrate to the acre in the autumn increased the yield to 43 bushels an acre, which compared favourably with the adjacent cultivated wheat at 41 bushels an acre.