Background

Local trials in the past two years have demonstrated that deep ripping sandy soils leads to large yield increase in chickpea.

However, farmers paddocks are highly variable and they would like to know which soil types need to be ripped and on which soil types chickpea do not respond to deep ripping.

Method

A trial site was setup near Kooloonong in 2021 to evaluate deep ripping response to barley across multiple soil types. This site will be utilising that trial to investigate the responses of Chickpea in 2022. Selected treatments will be re-ripped to compare first and second year ripping effects within the trial.

To evaluate yield responses of chickpea to deep ripping across the variable soil types encountered within Mallee paddocks, Genesis 090 sown with either Unripped or Deep ripping to target depth of 30cm and 50cm with Tilco A66 tines spaced at 56 cm apart.