Cutting The Cane With Grower Dave Perkins

Photo credit: Victoria Velton

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‍By Victoria Velton

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Welcome to the Cutting The Cane, a column where we have a chat with those supporting the backbone of the local economy: the farmers behind the sugar. This week Dave Perkins, a farmer of 63 years, answered our questions on his trial tissue culture operations.

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What stage are your paddocks at now?

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The paddock, the normal plant, was planted about two and a half months ago, and the tissue culture was planted about five weeks ago.

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What varieties of tissue culture are you trialling?

I've planted all the new varieties that SRA give us. But I still keep going on with the old ones. I went back to a few Q 96 this year. That's not tissue culture, but that was some plants I bought just to see how they would perform. We used to grow a lot of Q 96 here before.

So, I’ve got a mix of old variety and the new variety that's come out this year. I don't trust the new varieties too much. So, I always have a fallback one.

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Why have you chosen the varieties that you've growing?

Because I know they grow well here. I got Q 96 this year because even though it's an old variety, our farm here used to grow about 60% Q 96. Though I might only have one trailer for next year. That's about it. It’s a very sweet variety.

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When you look to buy or trial new cane varieties, what are your priorities?

I like to get a variety that's smut resistant. Other than that, I asked my friend Darrin Harrigan, who started me on tissue culture about four years ago and he hasn't led me astray. I like a variety that's going to ratoon well, that's the main thing: ratooning well. If it doesn't ratoon, it's not worth it.

And smut is like a virus on the cane. It gets a black sooty smudge on the leaf, and then the centre of the cane, and then it ends up killing it. The varieties that are not resistant to it, they will eventually get it.

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