To test the ability of a range of drainage treatments to improve crop yields in soil prone to waterlogging.
Key messages
In a year where waterlogging caused severe yield penalties, all treatments resulted in a yield increase compared to the control.
On flat waterlogged land, raised beds provided the best yield result but they do have some
management issues .
The delved treatment drained a considerable amount of water, yielded equal to the other treatments (but less than the raised beds) and was more cost effective to install with fewer management issues.
Gravel slots and gravel moles also worked extremely well but the slots were too expensive to install to consider for broadacre use. No commercial scale gravel mole is available at present.
Conventional moles are prone to collapse with Kangaroo Island’s sodic clays.
Lead research organisation
Agriculture Kangaroo Island Incorporated
Host research organisation
N/A
Trial funding source
NLP
Related program
N/A
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the trial sponsors:
National Landcare Program through the Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board, and
Trial source data and summary not available Check the trial
report PDF for trial results.
Climate
Derived climate information
No observed climate data available for this trial. Derived climate data is
determined from trial site location and national weather sources.
Vivonne Bay SA
SILO weather estimates sourced from https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/silo/
Jeffrey, S.J., Carter, J.O., Moodie, K.B. and Beswick, A.R. (2001). Using spatial interpolation to
construct a comprehensive archive of Australian climate data , Environmental Modelling and Software, Vol
16/4, pp 309-330. DOI: 10.1016/S1364-8152(01)00008-1.
