24 February 2004: For the first time in four years, leading agricultural seed company, Pacific Seeds has announced the commercial release of a new grain sorghum hybrid. Pacific Seeds Grain Sorghum business manager, Scott Gibson said MR-Bounty, which was trialed as PAC2404, is the first hybrid commercially released since MR-Pacer in 2000-01.

"Because our existing hybrids perform so well, Pacific Seeds isn't in a hurry to release new hybrids, which means we have time to thoroughly test and assess the results of our breeding program before we commercially release the varieties," he said. MR-Bounty was trialed over three years, at 114 sites across the Australian grain sorghum growing area, which stretches from the Liverpool Plains in the south to Central Queensland. "It's a medium - quick maturity grain sorghum, with its maturity fitting between those of MR-Pacer and MR43. In trials to date, when compared head to head against opposition hybrids of similar and even later maturity, Bounty is yielding about 10 percent better than opposition hybrids."

Evidence of the rigorous breeding and trialing program conducted by the company comes in the form of hybrids that weren't released from the program. "We had four hybrids which reached the trialing phase," Mr Gibson said. "Of those, only Bounty, which was trialed as Pac2404, performed consistently well enough over a wide range of conditions and seasons to qualify for commercial release. Our breeding program has resulted from feedback from growers who have asked for a slightly quicker maturity grain sorghum which still has excellent yield potential. Some the reasons Bounty will appeal to growers are it's large open heads, low number of tillers and its huge, heavy grain."

Under broad scale cropping on Queensland's southern Darling Downs, the new variety has performed exceedingly well, with a crop planted by Black Farming Company, at Brookestead winning the Pittsworth Show Society Dryland Grain Sorghum competition with an estimated yield of 9.6tonnes/ha. Black Farming Company are in the process of harvesting a bumper grain sorghum crop this year. Of all the varieties planted by the farming company, MR-Bounty will be one of their best.

Caption: Peter and Laurie Black, of Black Farming Company amid their winning crop of new grain sorghum hybrid, MR-Bounty