James Clark, GRDC northern panel chairman says a recent sorghum pre-breeding summit in Brisbane brought all sectors of the industry together for a strategic look at current and future pre-breeding and breeding priorities.

“GRDC is strongly committed to ensuring growers benefit from GRDC investments in sorghum breeding through an efficient and effective pipeline of pre-breeding delivered by the Department Employment, Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI) leading to improved sorghum varieties via the major seed companies,” Mr Clark says.

“Grower concerns such as increased yield, lodging, ergot, grain size, feed quality, drought tolerance and the Staygreen trait are high priorities.”

GRDC invests $600,000 per annum in the core sorghum breeding project operated out of DEEDI’s Hermitage Research Station, Warwick, Queensland.

Mr Clark said GRDC was keen to ensure sorghum carves out a place as an increasingly reliable crop in the more marginal cropping areas as well as the prime sorghum growing areas of the Liverpool Plains and Darling Downs.

The meeting brought together representatives from GRDC, researchers, seed companies and leading agricultural consultants.

GRDC sees sorghum research priorities as a critical part of its new northern region crop sequencing program that will receive $12.5 million funding over the next five years.

Stuart Kearns, GRDC manager validation and adoption said the benefits of crop rotations or sequences were well known.

“Better sequences manage the water and nutrient cycles and break the disease and weed cycles,” Mr Kearns said.

“Not only are these better sequences more sustainable, they cost less and pay more.

“Research has already been conducted on the value of various broadleaf crops growing in rotation with cereals but there is no single ideal crop sequence as each farm and paddock is different.”

GRDC is sponsoring the Australian Summer Grains Conference 2010 that will bring together participants in the sorghum, maize, sunflower, soybean, and mungbean industries from May 31 to June 3 on the Gold Coast.

In a first for Australia, five major summer crop industries will join forces to host a combined conference in an endeavour to provide growers with tailored information geared to their farming systems in the one central location.