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NW Washington | I read about those fantastic yields earlier. Turns out they were some yield trial plots looking at various tillage practices. The no-till plots seeded with a Cross-Slot drill had the highest yields. I will paste in the info that I have. Does not paste in just like it appeared originally, so bear with it.
Cross Slot® no-tillage out-yielded every other treatment in a recent FAR wheat trial.
The New Zealand Foundation for Arable Research (FAR) has released figures from a Canterbury experiment that compared six alternative methods of establishing and growing winter wheat. FAR was at pains to point out that the results could not be compared statistically but was sufficiently confident of the results to release them at a recent Manawatu field day.
The treatments were (1) 4-pass conventional tillage based on ploughing plus sub soiling, (2) 3-pass minimum-tillage, including sub soiling (3) 2-pass Cross Slot no-tillage including sub soiling, (4) 2-pass disc-roll/broadcast and sub soiling, (5) 1-pass Cross Slot no-tillage without sub soiling, (6)1-pass disc-roll/broadcast without sub soiling.
FAR also recorded the costs of each treatment and assumed a gross return for wheat of NZ$300/tonne.
Table 1 lists both the gross and net returns/ha (New Zealand dollars).
Treatment
Yield t/ha
X $300/tonne
Cost $/ha
Net-return $/ha
1. 4-pass plough + tillage + subsoil
14.4
$4,320
$234
$4,086
2. 3-pass minimum tillage + sub soil
15.4
$4,620
$145
$4,475
3. 2-pass Cross Slot no-tillage + sub soil
16.6
$4,980
$173
$4,807
4. 2-pass disc-roll/broadcast + sub soil
15.2
$4,560
$111
$4,449
5. 1-pass Cross Slot no-tillage
16.8
$5,040
$115
$4,925
6. 1-pass disc-roll/broadcast
14.2
$4,260
$53
$4,207
The following observations can be made from the FAR data.
All treatments yielded remarkably well (see below).
The two Cross Slot no-tillage treatments (with and without sub soiling) produced the two highest yields of 16.6 and 16.8 t/ha, respectively (16.8 t/ha is equivalent to 256 b/ac).
The worst yield (14.2 t/ha) was from disc-roll/broadcasting without sub soiling.
Although sub soiling helped disc-roll/broadcasting, it did nothing for no-tillage.
The worst net return (and second-worst yield) was from conventional tillage.
The net-return from the best treatment was NZ$839/ha higher than the worst treatment.
For a farmer cropping, say, 300 hectares (720 acres) of wheat per year, the gain in net-returns by converting from conventional tillage to Cross Slot no-tillage, for example, would have paid for an entire Cross Slot no-tillage drill (plus some change) in the first year.
FAR was at pains to point out that all of the yields in this experiment were unusually high. This sometimes happens with small plot experiments. But presumably this factor had applied more or less equally to all treatments. So comparisons between treatments should still be valid.
Putting these yields into perspective, the highest field-scale wheat yield so far recorded in the Guinness Book of Records – the unofficial world record – was recorded by Chris Dennison using conventional tillage near Oamaru, New Zealand in 2004. It was 15.015 t/ha (229 b/ac). The maximum FAR small-plot yield in this experiment was 12% higher than that and was obtained by Cross Slot no-tillage without sub soiling. Because the FAR data were not recorded on a field scale they will probably never qualify for the Guinness Book of Records, but they are noteworthy nonetheless.
The remarkable thing about the FAR no-tillage crops (which were drilled by B and H Contracting, Geraldine) is that no-fertilizer was applied with the drill at the time of drilling. The ability of Cross Slot drills to band fertilizer separately from the seed in narrow rows at drilling has long been recognised as one of their stronger features. But on this occasion that attribute did not contribute to yield.
“This is not surprising” says company CEO, Dr John Baker. “Most people forget that Cross Slot no-tillage openers do a lot more than simply band fertilizer. Plant physiologists at Washington State University, for example, believe that the slot micro-environment created by Cross Slot openers is so favourable and the seeds and seedlings are so un-stressed early on, that the yield potential of the plants is already partly set before the seedlings emerge from the ground. Fertilizer banding is a bonus. But even without it, Cross Slot no-tillage appears to be beneficial to most plants. Furthermore, because soil structure improves over time with any no-tillage program, published data from Crop and Food Research show that crop yields will simply track upwards as the soil structural score tracks upwards. Because Cross Slot no-tillage is also much cheaper than tillage, it is a genuine win-win for those farmers who have the foresight to make the change”.
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225 Bushel Wheat
