Commercial sesame crop on the horizon for Northern Australia

One of the spices with the potential to knock out the rest due to promising performance is sesame seeds, but close competitors include Kalonji or nigella seeds, and fennel.

The Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia has been working on the spice project for the past five years, working with farmers, researchers, advisers, commercial seed companies.

Sesame has proven to be a cut above the rest due to good yields despite the hot and dry climate, reliability to grow across a reasonable amount of land, and great domestic and international market opportunities.

Researchers are now fine tuning ideal planting and harvesting times across a range of Queensland climates to ensure less seed loss, as well as working out best practice for nutrient and water allocations.

Growth trials in the state have been spread across the far north and central Queensland. Trials have also been happening in Western Australia.

Trials have show that all regions produce the crop well over summer.

Crops in central Queensland struggled through winter however due to cooler temperatures, with researchers indicating anything under eight to 10 degrees Celsius affected growth and performance.

Researchers anticipated that in CQ, sesame could go into rotation with cotton, with the potential for growers to fit it in as a cash crop either before or after the season, depending on its length.

In the far north, researchers said sesame could fit nicely into a sugarcane system, or again within cotton in the top end.

In both cotton and cane, researchers thought sesame had the potential to break disease, pest, and weed cycles.

Anecdotal information also indicated there may be nematode-reducing potential in the crop.

The research demonstrated that sesame could be grown dryland.

Like other crops it yielded better once irrigated, but the price per tonne would likely make it a valuable crop to include in a cycle despite a drop in yielded due to less water.

According to Central Queensland University researcher Dr Tieneke Trotter, in the current market farmers could be getting anywhere between $1,000 and $1500 a tonne for sesame.

"It could potentially fit in as a short season crop around the major crops, such as cotton, which often is irrigated and needs that water allocation.

"If we have enough moisture in the soil to be able to get the sesame up and growing it can then cope with a little bit of a dry period.

"With every crop, and sesame is no different, to have good moisture around the time that your grain filling or that you're producing that product is really important for yield.

"But that's not to say that if there is a dry period that it's not going to still produce a reasonable crop that could be sold."

Due to the promising results, sesame has been identified as an emerging industry by AgriFutures Australia, with the organisation spending big to help the sesame industry emerge within the next five years.

Part of that funding has been to support growers to branch out and learn more about the industry from the once place that prides itself on doing everything bigger and better - the US.

Alton Downs grower Peter Foxwell has been involved with research trials for over a decade, being a pioneer grower in the expansion of the mung bean industry.

On Monday he and a CQU researcher arrived in Texas to start a 10-day study tour that would take them through Oklahoma and Kansas to look at planting and harvest machinery and meet with growers.

According to researchers, the US broad acre cropping system, incorporating effective harvest machinery, was what the Australian industry would want be modelled on.

Another grower involved in the research trials, Aaron Kiely from Deneliza Downs in Emerald, will be planting a sesame crop in the next fortnight.

He said while last year around a hectare of both black and white sesame was planted, this year around a half a hectare would be planted, with the reduction due to seasonal differences.

He currently has a full crop of cotton on the property that spans across 600 hectares, however with a drier year and less water allocation, it was a matter of fitting the sesame into his irrigation schedule.

Another major difference this year was that there would be three plantings across November, December, and January to assess yield differences from planting at different times of the year.

He said part of the research was trying to work out how much water the crop required, but from what he he seen so far it could survive with minimal water, which could indicate it may be a good crop in drought.

Dr Tieneke Trotter said the spice industry was reasonably new in Australia, with Australia currently importing most of their spices from overseas.

She thought Australia was in the unique position to move into broad acre spice cropping, such as sesame, with a competitive edge due to being able to produce a higher quality and standard than some other countries still hand planting and harvesting.

"There's a lot of countries that really like Australian grown product because it's viewed as clean and green and so they're I think there would be really good potential there for export markets."

She said part of the research was looking into developing export protocols to make sure the supply chain would be in place before the crop went commercial.