The performance of Sicot 71BR in the past 2 seasons has been incredible across most growing regions. The CSD Extension and Development Team outlines the results of this variety in replicated trials, commercial crops, as well as some detailed analysis of crop where it has yielded exceptionally.

Adam Kay
As you can see, Cotton Seed Distributors backs up the varieties it sells with full and rigorous trial information. The Sicot 71BR Bollgard® Roundup Ready® is being no exception. We have shown you that it can produce exceptional yields and this is demonstrated by winning 32 of the 41 fully replicated large scale trials it has been entered in over the last two seasons. In surveys conducted of commercial fields, it has averaged over 11 bales to the hectare, 4½ bales per acre. A phenomenal yield, and in trials it has averaged over 10 bales to the hectare, 4 bales to the acre. Again demonstrating the exceptional yield potential. The fibre quality of this variety is also good. Staple length is slightly shorter than Sicot 289BR and Sicala 60BR but in over 80% of the trials, it has achieved a length of greater than 36, and in over 82% of the commercial fields the length has been 36 or greater. I am sure this information will be used by you to produce the best results you can with this elite variety in the coming season.

We are here with Rob Eveleigh (left) of CSD. Rob can you just give us a rundown of how 71BR has performed in the variety trials this season.

Sicot 71BR has probably been the most outstanding variety that CSD has ever released. We will go through some of the trial results in a minute but basically it has performed well from Emerald in the trials up there right through to the southern trials in the Riverina. We have never had a variety that’s had that sort of adaptability and performance over such a wide area.

Rob would you mind just elaborating more on these trial results, how has it actually gone?

We have had 71BR now in 41 trials over 2 seasons, as I said before, spread over the whole industry and over that time it has finished first in about 32 of those trials, so its won the trial on 32 occasions out of 41 and on another 6 occasions its come second and third on one occasion. So that’s a pretty outstanding performance. The other thing that is outstanding about it has been the actual average yield over all those trials, all those locations, it has an average yield of over 4 bales per acre.

Rob can you give us a rundown on how Sicot 71BR has performed in regards to fibre quality?

Fibre quality is obviously a very important factor in selection of varieties and certainly Sicot 71BR is shorter than some of the other varieties that we sell, such as Sicala 60BR and Sicot 289BR, but nevertheless the stats would suggest that its going to make the present base grade which is 35 length on at least 95% of occasions. So in 95% of our trials it made that 35 length or better and in fact it made 36 length on at least 80% of trials so in 8 out of every 10 trials its made 36 length or greater.

Rob, you just mentioned that Sicot 71BR didn’t make base grade in a couple of occasions, could you elaborate a little bit further why this was the case?

On a couple of occasions it didn’t make 35 length and those two trials were actually 2 trials in the Riverina and in fact nearly all the varieties included in the trials were short and the 71BR was slightly short in those trials as well and that’s largely due to stress and that stress was probably a combination of things. Certainly they had some very low temperatures during the time when fibre length would have been determined in the Riverina and they also at one site there may have also been some moisture stress associated with that. So you can explain the situations where it hasn’t made base. In any of the trials where there has been plenty of water and more normal growing conditions there has been no problem with fibre length.

In terms of micronaire, how has it performed?

Micronaire is another category and generally there have been no problems with micronaire. In the micronaire stakes it’s never exceeded 4.9 in micronaire in any of the trials which is pretty good because there have been some sites with reasonably high micronaire. Its been in the sweet spot for micronaire on about 50% of occasions so its in that 3.8 – 4.5 range in a bit over 50% of occasions but you will find that relates quite well or as much the same as the other Bollgard II® varieties that are normally grown.

Rob, how can growers get their hands on these trial results?

We have made the trial results very easy to get hold of by anyone, basically at the moment all of the trial results are on the CSD web site that’s csd.net.au and you can follow the links to the variety trial results. They are all up there now with all the details. The other way obviously in the next few weeks you will receive the CSD trial results booklet which will be direct mailed to everyone. If you don’t get a copy of that or you are having difficulty you can certainly contact any of the CSD Extension personnel and we will be able to run through the trial results for you.

James (Quinn), CSD sent out a very extensive survey to growers that received the Sicot 71BR this past season. Can you outline some of the responses to that survey?

We received 95 replies back which represent a round about a 45% return which we are very very pleased with. We estimate that that survey represented around about 5000 hectares of the crop grown throughout the Australian cotton industry last year. So although this is only preliminary data, we have great confidence in the results that it has actually shown at the moment. Growers were asked to also compare a similar variety, just to gauge the performance of 71BR against this variety and I would really like to thank those growers that took the time to reply. This information has been very valuable.

James, can you go through a little bit more detail on some of the findings of the survey?

Yes, as I just mentioned, it is only preliminary data but we will just highlight some of the things that it has been showing. We have had some excellent yields across all valleys this season and Sicot 71BR was a major part of these high yields.

In the 69 commercial crops that we have had they have yielded it on average roundabout 11.11 bales/ha or pretty much 4.5 bales/ac and which is really pleasing to us is the fact that the Sicot 71BR has out performed any comparison variety by far, up to about 20% in some cases.

It has really performed very well. In each valley, it has averaged over 4 bales except for the Balonne.

I suppose that special mention must be made to the Gwydir and the Namoi Valleys that have really shown some very excellent yields in this variety which their average was roundabout 4.7 bales an acre which is roundabout 11.7 bales per hectare which is quite good. When we were looking at the individual fields on a yield by yield basis about 50% of the surveys returned went above 4 bales an acre. About 25% went, and we had one crop that achieved an excellent result in the 6 bales an acre.

James that’s good about the yields, there has been some fantastic yields there but what about quality, did the survey give any information on the quality of Sicot 71BR?

Yes there have been a few questions throughout the industry in regards to the quality of the 71BR this season, but what we found in the 68 commercial crops that we had the data for at the moment, 95% came back with a very good micronaire, between 3.5 to 4.9. 98% of crops went 28 grams per tex or more and all crops went above 35 in length with 82% of those crops going 36 or better which is very pleasing.

James a lot of growers ask the question about what variety is best to grow in back to back fields and there will be quite a few fields this coming season that will be planted back to back. Can you make some comments about how Sicot 71BR has performed in those back to back fields?

We have seen some exceptional yields in the fallow situation and that’s where most of these high yielding ones have been coming from. It has been surprising to see the performance of the Sicot 71BR in the back to back situation.

When comparing between the fallow and the back to back it’s about a bale behind as you can see in this figure.

But the interesting thing is that in a back to back situation that the Sicot 71BR outperformed all other varieties that it was compared to. This figure here is showing Sicot 289BR and DP 556BGII/RR grown on similar farms and similar management.

You can see here that the 289BR is about ½ a bale behind the 71BR and the 556 is about a bale behind the 71BR.

So irrespective of whether you are growing fallow or back to back, Sicot 71 is still going to give you the highest yield?

Yes, that’s definitely the case.

James also on a similar vein, would you like to make some comments about fibre quality of Sicot 71BR in fallow and back to back situations?

Yes, we did some differences in regard but with micronaire and the strength we didn’t find a difference at all but in the length situation, the fallow blocks had about 132nd length increase over the back to back situation.

James would you like to make any further comments about the Survey and its findings so far?

It has been interesting to have a look and to see how this crop has performed in commercial situations but what has really been a highlight is in a commercial situation it’s really new to what we are actually seeing in our trials and that gives us great confidence in our trial program.

David (Kelly), there was some absolutely exceptional yields achieved this year and Sicot 71BR featured in a lot of those yields. The CSD Extension and Development team have done quite a bit of work trying to work out where these yields came from, would you like to explain how we went about investigating the yields of these crops.

Rob, in 30 crops last year at picking time we went out and in those crops we selected a number of metres of row within the crops to try and get a good representative sample of the fields we were in and in then we divided the bolls from those crops up into eight different segments.

We have divided the main stems of the plants up into lots of four fruiting nodes and we kept separate the first position and also the second and third position and also the vegetative nodes. So we had for each plant bolls from eight different sections of the plant.

We picked these bolls into our, what we called our boll box and when we did this we were able to count the number of bolls that were going into the box, we kept the samples and we ginned them with the 10-saw gin so we were able to get yield from those samples and we also got them HVI tested so we had quality from those samples and when we played around with that data we were able to generate information such as what we are looking at now which is a crop of high yielding 71BR grown on the Darling Downs. We can look at that crop and see that about a bale per hectare of that crop came from the vegetative nodes. We also find that most of the yield in that particular crop came from right at the centre of the plant between nodes 1 to 12 there is about 9 bales a hectare in there. So you can really get a good picture of how these crops look.

Dave, you must have seen some pretty interesting comparisons and differences between crops. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yes we were able to draw some really good comparisons between how different varieties grew in the same situation and we were also able to look at some of the exceptional yielding crops that we saw across the industry last year and try and work our where the good yield was coming from.

Dave can you tell us a bit about some of the comparisons that you have actually made?

Well in three of our replicated variety trials in the Border Rivers last year that included Sicot 71BR and Sicot 289BR we did the segmented picking so we had side by side result from a number of trials.

If you look at the yield result from this comparison, we found that both of the yields were exceptional, over 10 bales per hectare or 4 bales and acre, but the Sicot 71BR was about 5% higher yield than the 289BR which is about the same as the 28 replicated trials that we have done that included both of those variety sites, a pretty good difference.

If we look at the number of bolls per metre, the numbers are actually very similar but the big difference is the Sicot 71BR has boll weight of about 6% higher than the 289BR and its just a factor of Sicot 71BR, its got big heavy bolls which is why a lot of people were dragging great yields off crops that didn’t look particularly showy last year.

Another interesting comparison between these two varieties is the fibre quality.

If you look at the strength and micronaire they are both pretty much the same but there was a slight difference in fibre length.

Now if you look at the fibre length there, both of them are well and truly above base grade but the Sicot 289BR is about .02 of an inch longer than the Sicot 71BR and again if you look through the average of the 28 trials that we have done with both those varieties in it, that’s the sort of trend that you get and its just a simple fact that Sicot 289BR is a longer variety than Sicot 71BR and in situations where water is limiting you have probably got a little bit less room to move with Sicot 71BR than 289BR but as we heard before, in 80% of our trials and 80% of commercial fields it made 36 and above and in many situations its made 37’s and 38’s.

Looking at the yields of these two comparisons, we have a 57% higher yield in the higher yielding crops. In the areas we handpicked in these crops we got about 15.5 bales per hectare. In reality these fields averaged close to about 13 ½ bales a hectare so we obviously went into some of the better parts of the field but we still had a pretty good contrast.

Looking at why there was such a difference, the high yielding crops had bolls that were about 5% heavier but it also had 43% more bolls than the lower yielding crops and that’s 43 bolls a metre and this number in boll numbers is really reflected in a big difference in the first position retention.

If you look at where both comparisons put their bolls on, you can see the number of vegetative branches is similar in both. The number of bolls at the very top of the plant is very similar in both meaning that they didn’t have to grow an enormous plant to achieve these yields. The area where there is such a big difference is the first position bolls between fruiting branches 1 to 12.

The high yielding crops have about 85 bolls per metre in this section while the lower yielding crops have about 45 bolls per metre. This big difference probably can’t really be fully explained by insects because the number of bolls on the vegetative and the top of the plant are still very similar.

It just means that these crops were probably grown in a near stress free environment where a good climate, good soil conditions, good everything to be able to maintain the high retention in the middle of the crop as well as putting on some of the later fruit as well.

Dave you have looked at those very high yielding crops this year and doing a lot of work actually pulling those crops apart, can you make, a few concluding comments about the work and how growers might be able to manage crops to achieve those fantastic yields again?

Well the big difference was having good boll size, plenty of lint per boll which comes back to variety a lot but also comes down to management, season long but also getting a lot of boll numbers and it really comes back to trying to push a crop along to be able to put on a lot of potential squares which turn into bolls but also being able to manage that crop so it holds onto a lot of those bolls as well and again that comes down to more than insects, its all round crop management having a crop that’s healthy enough to be able to sustain a big boll load.

But this data has really shown the enormous potential of Sicot 71BR even at moderate boll counts what we saw about 110 bolls per metre people are still achieving good yields around 4 bales an acre or 10 bales a hectare but if you can bolster those boll numbers up to 140-160 bolls per metre you can achieve a pretty high end in the yield perspective.

Further Information: 
Dr Stephen Allen, Robert Eveleigh, John Marshall,  Craig McDonald, David Kelly or James Quinn