Sorghum trial full of spirit
Ord Stage 2 developer Kimberley Agricultural Investment has revealed the sorghum it hopes to grow as a stepping stone to the sugar industry will be used to make the popular Asian alcoholic spirit Baijiu.
KAI general manager Jim Engelke said the company was funding sorghum trials at the Department of Agriculture and Food's Kununurra Research Station to find a suitable variety for the Ord Valley.
"We've got three varieties here, they are sweet sorghums or otherwise known as forage sorghums, and we are looking at their viability for milling and making them into Baijiu," he said.
"Baijiu is a South East Asian spirit drunk fairly regularly in the region, particularly in China, and it is made out of the syrup of sweet sorghum.
"It can also be made out of the grain of seed sorghum."
Mr Engelke said the decision to attempt to establish sorghum as a stepping stone crop was quite strategic because it used the same harvesters, transports and similar milling technologies to sugar.
"It's a stepping stone from where we are now to what we ultimately still want, which is a three-to-four million tonne sugar mill," he said.
"We need an interim option with processing, and we are currently assessing this for its viability and hoping it will be a success. We can't grow sorghum on a broad scale until we have processing facilities so we need to prove the crop first.
"Once we have proved them, we need to look at getting processing infrastructure. Once we have designed, commissioned and built that, we can then crop sorghum."
DAFWA Kununurra Research Station manager Mark Warmington said the trials had shown later planting in about November had produced the best yields.
"This is the first year we've had a look at the sweet forage sorghum," he said.
"At the moment, the trial is only about 0.3 of a hectare but we are looking at expanding it into about seven hectares."
"(KAI) want a crop that is going to give them high sugar content. We're certainly very pleased with the results from the November planting but a little bit disappointed with the earlier results."
Mr Warmington said the research station would continue to trial different varieties and fertiliser rates in an effort to gain the best possible crop yields in Ord Valley conditions.
"We've played around with the fertiliser rates a bit and it's certainly quite a hungry crop," he said. "We are applying quite a bit of nitrogen and once we cut it we'll give it another dose to bring it back as a return."
Mr Warmington said there were varieties in Australia and overseas which could be an option.
"A lot of these varieties are traditionally made for cattle to feed off," he said.
"We grow it up to the next stage where the sugars really concentrate just as they start to set seed, and that's when we go in and harvest it."
Agriculture Minister Ken Baston last week inspected the crop trials on a visit to Kununurra.
