The winning durum crop grown by the Prowse family, “Gwendalan”, Blackville, on the southern end of the Liverpool Plains, has an estimated yield of six tonnes a hectare – making it the best yielding cereal crop in the ASC competition.

“It was extremely dense and even in height,” said judge and Industry and Investment NSW district agronomist at Young, Paul Parker.

Growers from across the northern cropping zone seized the opportunity to enter the inaugural durum judging and receive feedback on their crops.

So keen was the response the competition will be expanded next year.

Mr Parker said he hoped the competition feedback would help producers grow better crops.

While durums out-yielded the bread varieties, the season across the board for all wheats has been characterised by severe infestations of the fungal disease, crown rot.

Mr Parker said the dry conditions had contributed to the disease’s virulence, but there could also be a more sinister contributing factor emerging.

The puzzling thing was that even where crop rotations were beyond reproach pinched grains and empty heads were still a problem.

In one of the more notable cases, crown rot still occurred despite a long fallow/sorghum/long fallow/wheat rotation.

Brothers Michael and Murray Prowse’s winning crop was planted on June 19 at 65kg/ha on a full profile of moisture, after the farm recorded 665 millimetres of rain from June 2008 to March 2009, including more than 150 millimetres in November.

Seed was treated with the antifungal Dividend prior to sowing and the paddock treated with a pre-plant application of 250 kilograms a hectare of urea and a zinc starter of 45kg/ha.