Former NVT manager Alan Bedggood is proud to have helped set up a system to support growers in choosing new varieties for their farms

Former barley industry development officer Alan Bedggood managed Agriculture Victoria’s variety trials before being employed to set up the National Variety Trials (NVT) for GRDC.

Mr Bedggood recalls when, in 2002, state agricultural departments ceased wheat and barley breeding.

“When I ran Agriculture Victoria’s variety trials program in 2003, I invited all plant breeding companies to submit elite entries,” he says.

“Before the NVT started, state coordinators met yearly to share the development changes in equipment and trial protocols.”

While different groups continued with trial work, there was a need for independent, comparable and quality trial data growers and advisers could trust.

Experienced hand

When GRDC established the NVT and sought someone to head the program in 2005, Mr Bedggood was chosen for his experience and ability to ensure continuity.

He says when the NVT program rolled out, all state agricultural departments were ready, enabling a smooth transition.

“The same trial managers ran the experiments, and later, we saw companies like Kalyx and Agrisearch Services competing to run the trials.”

Coordinating the trials involved talking with plant breeding companies to source crop varieties.

“Initially, breeding companies wanted to put potential new varieties in every trial in every state,” Mr Bedggood says.

“However, due to constraints on budget and the number of available spots in NVT, we had to push back and ask where the varieties would be marketed.”

Variety performance

Mr Bedggood says a condition of entry for plant breeding companies was that their varieties had to be within two years of commercial release. This allowed growers to compare yield and grain quality two years before varieties could be bought.

He says the NVT’s primary benefit is that it provides trusted information that allows growers and agronomists to compare the performance of new varieties relative to others in local areas.

For the first time, we had all the potential new varieties in the trials, and the results made available to growers and agronomists online, as well as in hardcopy booklets.

By 2015, when he retired, Mr Bedggood says more than 600 variety trials had been established on more than 300 growers’ farms.

“I had a national focus for all the crops, which put me in touch with all the breeders, grain-quality scientists and biometricians,” he says.

“I travelled to all states to meet the trial managers, complete trial audits and present the results at GRDC Updates.”

He says it was a whole-of-industry job that he found empowering and enjoyable.

More information: National Variety Trials