June 28, 2016

Crop Nutrition Program Lifts Yields and Improves Crop Quality at Werribee South

By: Yara Australia

A switch to a Yara fertiliser program has dramatically lifted yields and quality on the AV Costa vegetable enterprise, at Werribee South in Victoria. Chris Sbrissa of AV Costa, said they grow cauliflower and broccoli all year round and had seen yields decline due to the presence of clubroot in both crops. “Clubroot looks like little potatoes that grow off the roots and they rot the stem, suffocating the plant” he said. “Broccoli with clubroot, meant that we were losing more than what we were cutting.” “Two years ago a range of Yara Australia products were recommended to help the plants combat the clubroot issues and the results have been outstanding. Ever since then, we’ve changed the way we’ve farmed and we’re getting the results now.” Mr Sbrissa said. “We haven’t looked back since. We are cutting between ninety and ninety-five per cent of what we put in the ground now. It is a lot better quality and more yield per acre, so that’s been our main turn around. (We haven’t lost any crop since then, so it has been good.”)

Mr Sbrissa said the improved health of the plants was a major factor in getting great results and they were able to utilise Yara products throughout the season to achieve this. 

“We’ve been using

  • YaraLiva™ NITRABOR,
  • YaraMila™ UNIVERSAL,
  • YaraLiva™ TROPICOTE
  • and YaraLiva™ CALCINIT in our main fertiliser regime.”

“The YaraLiva™ NITRABOR has been really helpful at producing the heavy yields. YaraLiva™ TROPICOTE has been integrated with that as well. If we see we need a bit more calcium out there we’ll go and spin some YaraLiva™ TROPICOTE out.”

He said one of the main benefits of the Yara Crop Nutrition program was being able to stabilise their pH with the advice provided by Yara.

“It is not lowering our pH anymore,” he said. “Before we had a lot of trouble with pH dropping below 7 so now we’ve got it staying around 8 with the use of YaraLiva™ CALCINIT.” The drop in pH had been a contributing factor to the issues with clubroot experienced by the enterprise in the past.

Mr Sbrissa said they had noticed less disease and insect damage through the crops than had previosuly occured. “The result that we are getting speaks for itself.