If your canola crop has been flowering one to two weeks (10 per cent) earlier, it means your variety is too early maturing for your sowing and emergence date and the vegetative period to build biomass was limited reducing yield potential.
If flowering starts after August 7, it means the variety maturity or emergence date was late and there is greater risk of high temperatures above 28ºC, which will limit flowering.
I suggest you write your starting flowering (10 per cent) dates in your diaries.
The start of flowering is also a key time for soil moisture.
Any moisture stress at the start of flowering significantly lowers flowering response and yield potential.
Fortunately, we have very good soil moisture which will lift yield potential.
Research shows that early emerged canola and wheat in April have deeper roots, reduced evaporative loss and greater access to subsoil moisture in spring than crops that emerge later.
This is from the longer length of vegetative growth which raises yield potential.
In canola, biomass is directly related to grain yield.
The deeper roots will be of great benefit when the lower rainfall El Nino system kicks in this spring.
The early sowing and emergence is one of the factors for the high Finley Discussion Group dryland and irrigated yields over the past 10 years.
Crops sown later this season have suffered from waterlogging and cold weather.
I hope you were able to obtain enough urea for topdressing canola (and wheat/barley).
I was surprised to hear of some recent results of the yield benefits from post-sowing topdressing nitrogen compared to pre-sowing nitrogen application.
The Finley Discussion Groups have known this since the ‘90s.
I am planning to run some discussion group meetings in August.
~ Contributed by John Lacy, a Finley-based independent agricultural consultant.
22°C