Wheat crop outlook October (Australia)

10 Oct 2016
Long-term median simulated shire yield using 2015 technology (115 years)

With the winter cropping season nearing an end, prospects continue to favour an above average winter season with a predicted wheat yield of 1.87 t/ha. This is 21% above the long-term median yield expectation and near to the top 20% ranking over all years. This outlook incorporates current soil water conditions and the seasonal rainfall outlook based on the southern oscillation index. 

Read the whole wheat crop report, October 2016
PDF file, 897KB

Descriptive note:

The seasonal wheat outlook is based on the
integration of (i) a simple agro-climatic wheat
stress index model (Oz-Wheat MII) (i.e. Bare
fallow routine - Ritchie, 1972; Wheat stress
index model adapted from - Fitzpatrick and
Nix, 1969; Nix and Fitzpatrick, 1969), which is
sensitive to water deficit or excess during the
growing season, (ii) actual climate data up to
the forecasting date and (iii) projected climate
data after that date. These projected data are
drawn from historical analogue years based on
similarity to the prevailing phase of the
Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) (Stone et al.,
1996). The Oz-Wheat model is run from 1
October the year before sowing in order to
account for the influence of the summer
fallow on starting soil moisture conditions.
The model input parameters for each shire (i.e.
potential available water content, planting rain
& stress index period) have been selected
based on the best fit when calibrated against
actual shire wheat yields from the Australian
Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for the period 1975 –
2000, 2005 & 2010 (MII). Cross validated
spatial correlation when predicting the shire
wheat yields for the 2000 season (MI) was 0.8
across all main wheat producing shires in
Australia (Potgieter et. al., 2006). For the
updated MII 75% of the 237 shire have R2
 >
0.60.

Queensland wheat outlook
October 2016, PDF file, 898 KB

Queensland wheat outlook
September 2016, PDF file, 892 KB

Queensland wheat outlook
August 2016, PDF file, 887 KB

Queensland wheat outlook
July 2016, PDF file, 882 KB

Queensland wheat outlook
June 2016, PDF file, 888 KB

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