Determine which variety to choose - An introduction to the variety performance comparison tool
Do you find yourself looking at variety trials in isolation and wondering how to tie trial results together? Whether that is over your region or several years to get a full picture of variety performance?
That’s where the Variety Performance Comparison Tool (VPC) on the CSD website can help you. It’s your window to the CSD Variety trial program database, enabling you to dig deeper, seek further insights and probe for more detailed analysis of both yield and fibre quality results.
Established by CSD in the late 1990’s the VPC tool, located on the CSD web site ‘Agronomy Tools’ offers crop managers the chance to make variety choices with head-to-head comparisons. The tool utilises the entire CSD variety trial program, not only for current season’s results, but overall past season’s commercial trials. Wondering how a new variety containing XtendFlex® is performing compared to your current favourite, use the VPC to find out. CSD in any given year can do between 40 to 80 variety trials. These side-by-side comparisons have helped Australian Cotton growers and advisors juggle the variety selection puzzle each season. These trials are great and a valuable resource, but only report on one site and one year each time. The VPC taps into this vast CSD Variety trials database and allows you to interact to customise your search with some cases displaying over 50 direct comparisons for a region.
CSD’s dedication in bringing new improved varieties to the industry has delivered exceptional outcomes, advanced the productivity and profitability of Australian cotton growers and strengthened the cotton industry. Over the lifespan of the CSD Variety trial program there has been a documented year on year yield increase of 0.163 b/ha or approximately $95 in additional revenue per hectare each season for the Australian cotton grower.
How Do I Access and Use the Tool?
The Variety Performance Comparison Tool is located on the CSD website, under Agronomy Tools / Variety Performance Comparison.
There are 5 steps to customise and categorise your comparison,
- Simply scroll through the drop-down variety lists and select the varieties you wish to compare.
- Select if you would like trials from either irrigated, semi irrigated or dryland production systems.
- Select either a specific region, a combination of, or all regions.
- Likewise for the year the trial was harvested, single year, multiple years or you can search all years.
- Lastly click on the compare button and the information will be instantly tabulated for you
So, what are you waiting for? Get comparing and remember you can also reach out to your local CSD E&D Agronomist to discuss varietal selection options.
Figure 1: A screen shot of the VPC showing a comparison between Sicot 761BXF and Sicot 748B3F, in irrigated conditions, from all regions all years (there are 12 trials over 3 years included in this analysis).