2023 cotton harvest underway in Central Queensland

Nutrien Emerald Agronomist, Tegan Brownie said the wet winter in 2022 and subsequent increase in irrigation allocations saw the total area of cotton planted increase to approximately 30,000 hectares this season.  

“Across the Central Highlands and Belyando regions, growers planted approximately 25,300 hectares of irrigated cotton and 4,400 hectares of dryland (also known as rain grown) cotton. Cotton was the main crop planted into irrigation country, with very small amounts of mungbeans and sorghum.” 

“Irrigated cotton was planted later than usual for many growers, following last season’s record yielding crops and then an influx of wet weather pushing back ground preparation,” said Tegan. 

Large rain events and cloudy weather throughout the growing season resulted in some crops shedding fruit, and forcing growers to ‘grow on’ their crops later than usual, in order to retrieve yields. 

“We’re normally picking in February and March in this area, but the wet weather has pushed our traditional picking period back as growers are wanting to provide crops with the opportunity to fully develop,” said Tegan.  

Cotton pickers started rolling into paddocks across Central Queensland a few weeks ago, with initial yield data indicating average yields of between 10 to 14 bales per hectare. Crops will continue to be harvested throughout May and potentially into June and July. 

After a very tough season for dryland cotton in 2021-22, many dryland growers in the region opted for sorghum, or chose to fallow paddocks for a winter wheat plant. However, conditions this season have been wetter than usual, with early indications of dryland cotton yields ranging from two to four bales per hectare. 

“These crops had great boll counts and the consistent rainfall meant good boll size and hopefully lint quality. The soft season allowed dryland crops to put on a lot of lateral growth with multiple boll positions held on branches. Wet weather caused some square shedding early on, however as the season has progressed with good conditions these crops have been able to load a lot of fruit on,” commented Tegan. 

As part of an agronomy team of five, including Emerald Branch Manager Darren Young, Tegan spends her days providing agronomy consultancy services to customers from Emerald to north of Clermont, across a range of irrigated and dryland cropping enterprises.  

“Throughout the cotton season my day-to-day role includes crop scouting to monitor for pests and disease and looking at nutrition and irrigation scheduling to ensure crops are growing to their optimal potential,” said Tegan. 

“We have a variety of crops in Central Queensland which allows us to switch between cotton and other broadacre crops, and also look after some horticulture. The variety in my days keeps work very interesting and allows us to always continue learning. This region has a very unique climate which means there is the opportunity for cotton to be planted from August to December and harvested up until July.” 

“Cotton is my favourite crop to work with. It’s a very intense crop but can be grown with multiple management techniques and manipulated with water and nutrition to produce some outstanding results. In Central Queensland we can also ‘grow on’ cotton which means the crop will traditionally cut-out but instead of picking it we encourage the crop to restart. This innovative technique can add a large amount of yield on with very little extra resources.” 

“As the cotton season begins to wrap up, we are spending a lot of time scheduling defoliations and checking the success of defoliation sprays. As the summer crops come to an end the winter plant is in full swing and our time will move into checking winter crops until early plant cotton in August,” said Tegan. 

The Nutrien Emerald and Springsure team of 17 provide crop protection, nutrition, agronomy, horticulture, animal health, merchandise, livestock, insurance and finance support to a broad customer base from Rolleston in the south, to north of Clermont. Check them out on Facebook at Nutrien Ag Solutions - Emerald and Instagram at @nutrienagsolutions_emerald 

Follow Tegan on Instagram at @tegans_agphotos