Wheat list hails Hydra and others

Three of the 17 new varieties included on the Wheat Quality Australia list, unveiled this week, are suitable to WA farmers.

These include the APW varieties Impress CL Plus and Hydra, and the APN Zen, all bred by InterGrain.

InterGrain's other noodle wheat, Supreme, was added last year.

The master list contains the names and highest possible grade for current wheat varieties approved by Australia's wheat classification process.

Released in September every year, it forms part of each season's Grain Trade Australia Wheat Standards.

Launched last year by Agriculture Minister Ken Baston, Impress CL Plus is a high-yielding mid to short-season Wyalkatchem-type wheat with a very large grain size, ideally suited to northern and central WA.

Hydra is also a mid to short-season maturity, offering Mace-equivalent yields with improved disease resistance, also suited to central and northern WA.

Calingiri farmer Kim Gronow is among WA farmers bulking up Hydra for seed.

Mr Gronow has about 15ha planted of Hydra and is happy with its progress.

He said the Hydra was planted towards the end of his program, so looks as slightly behind his nearby Mace plantings.

However, Mr Gronow says if it had been planted earlier, results would be comparable.

He is hoping to next year add Hydra into his rotation ,which is currently dominated by Mace and Calingiri wheat.

The noodle wheat Zen, meanwhile, is described as a Calingiri-type wheat with a mid to long-season maturity, offering excellent yield performance across a broad range of environments, similar to Mace.

Wheat Quality Australia chairman Don Plowman said in addition to the new releases and upgrades, there have been two other significant changes this year.

First, in continuation of the initiative launched last year, an additional 81 rarely grown older varieties (Australia-wide) have been flagged for removal from the 2017 list, after a consultation process was undertaken with grower groups this season.

Second, from this season on, the practice of "defaulting" a variety to a class outside of its primary zone will cease.

As a result of this, newly listed varieties will be shown as feed outside of the zones for which they have been awarded a class.