06 February 2004: North Star grain sorghum producer, Ross Harris, “Strathaine” received a pleasant surprise over the phone last month, after being drawn as the winner of a Yamaha ATV in the Pacific Seeds/Landmark Elite® Seed promotion. “At first I thought it was someone having a lend of me,” he said. “But I’m really pleased we won, I went in and saw it the other day and I’ll pick it up shortly.”

The competition was run by awarding a ticket, or tickets depending on how early seed was purchased, for every bag of Elite® treated seed growers bought from Landmark agents in the Northern NSW region. A regular user of Elite® treated seed, this season Mr Harris has planted around 220 ha of grain sorghum, two thirds of which is Elite® treated MR43. “The MR43 is looking really good; we’re really pleased with it.”

The crop was sown in 1.3m rows at a rate of 45,000 seeds/ha and, given the excellent rain received which was between 5.5 and 6 inches, Mr Harris said a good crop should be harvested soon. “We planted on about 20mm of rain on October 12,” he said “and applied starter Z at around 20kg/ha.” The Harris’ are hoping for a yield of about 4 t/ha from the crop. “This was the first season we’ve tried MR43 and we’ll grow it again next season.”

Caption: Manager Landmark Croppa Creek, Troy Hunt (left) Ross Harris, Director Thomas-Lee Motorcycles Goondiwindi, Jon Murphy and Penny Harris.