Im talking to Peter Bunce from Australian Classing Services.  Peter I guess this season we are well into cotton classing now.  Just wondering if we could get a bit of an overall picture of the fibre quality this season.  So I guess firstly, what are the overall grades been like?

Overall it hasn’t been the best year we have seen in history, especially compared to last year. The problem this year is with particular regards to micronaire.  We were all very worried about fibre quality after such a hot growing season.  The first 50,000 or so samples we classed had over 20% high mic and over 10% at 35 staple.  We were very nervous that this trend was going to continue throughout the season but fortunately it didn’t.  We are probably about 70% of the way through now and the stats have improved considerably.  The micronaire is probably down around 10% high mic and the 35 staple is below 6%, 35 staple so pretty good signs.

So when you say high mic you are talking about above 5?

Yes, when I say high mic I mean G6 and G7 micronaire.  So it was up around that 20% and it has come right down to around 10%.

Just more on the micronaire, what percentage of the crop roughly has been over 4.6 or over that premium range for micronaire?

Around 60% has been 4.6 to 4.9 which is quite large and then around 30% 4.5 and below.  

Have you had any low mic this year?

One or two cases.  We had one case where there was a bit of hail on a crop near Goondiwindi and also a few dryland crops have experienced low mic, but it’s very isolated.

And just a bit more on fibre length, generally has that been better or worse than last year?

Much better than last year.  There has been more interest since the base grade has gone up and 35 staple has come under a little more pressure.  But last year we saw about 10% of the crop went 35 staple, this year we are probably looking at 6 – 7%.

Would that 6% be irrigated or dryland or you don’t know?

A mixture, quite a lot of it is irrigated.  But obviously some of the dryland has slipped below that staple length.

Any comments on any regional differences in fibre quality?  Have you seen a difference from North – South – East – West?

There has been a big difference regionally.  Your South/East valleys have displayed much better fibre properties.  They haven’t experienced the high mic that we have seen in the valleys to the North and West.  For instance the Lachlan Murrumbidgee have had a great year.  They have had good yields and they have also had less than 1% high mic and less than 1% 35 staple which is a great result.

And anything East/West or from Queensland different wise?

Yes the Downs have had a good year as well with some excellent colour.  We haven’t seen as many 11’s or 11-1’s as we saw last year but the Downs is consistently produced 11-1’s and their fibre properties have also been reasonably good.  There are a few isolated patches where it has been the opposite, they have been caught by rain further up North and we have seen some 41’s and even 51’s but luckily those cases have been pretty isolated.  We have probably only seen 4% or less of the crop fall below 31-3 colour grade which is consistent with a normal year.

Any comments, I know there wasn’t a huge amount of conventional cotton in this area but I guess certainly further North there was a bit more conventional, any comments on differences between Bollgard that, have you noticed?

Yes when we do comparisons, we see that the conventional doesn’t tend to have as much high mic as some of your Bollgard, particularly Bollgard Roundup Ready varieties for some reason, I don’t know why.  But with conventional you will tend to get a slightly lower micronaire and shorter staple.  So in the valleys who’ve experienced a bit of heat stress, conventional varieties can produce maybe a bit more 35 staple compared to Bollgard  Roundup Ready.  It is the main trend that we see across all families.

Any comments on any of the dryland, have you been able to break down some of the dryland crops compared to irrigated?

We have, as every year we see a big variability in dryland.  In the worse case we have seen dryland with short staple down as low as 32, 33 staple but we have seen some farms who have consistently produced field after field of 37 – 38 staple, grades above 21-3’s, mic within premium mic range at 3.8 - 4.5 and strength above 30gpt. Some of this variability was within the same valleys –  for example “Milton Downs” had a great year and didn’t have a bale below premium, whearas growers in the same valley experienced some length issues. .

That is a good result.  You have also done a little bit of Pima this year, any comments on what that looked like?

It is pretty good.  We have done a couple of thousand bales of Pima, probably the average staple length would be about 46 staple but we have seen some from down South where a field averaged between 48 – 50 staple and really good  micronaire.  Sometimes Pima has lower micronaire but this year it has been around the 3.7 – 4.2 which is excellent and we haven’t seen many bales fall below 46 staple length.  Strength has also been quite high, around 40 – 41 gpt upwards to around 48 grams per tex which is quite impressive today.

And the grades on that?

Grades have been mixed but mainly 2’s and 3’s.  Probably more 2’s than 3’s which is what you want.  I haven’t seen many 1’s. Overall this year has been a pretty good year for Pima.