Hello from the team at rebel seeds…
We would like to introduce who we are, how and why we began Rebel Seeds & then some detail on our foundational variety Borlaug 100. Rebel Seeds is owned by four farmers who first met on an agricultural tour throughout the United States. Derryck Mickelborough farms over 1,000Ha at Dalby with 700Ha devoted to irrigation cropping. Andrew Butler operates a mixed farming enterprise with over 2,500Ha of country around the Condamine area. Stephen Gibson’s family enterprise operates between Dulacca and Condamine with 9,000Ha of farm land. Damien Scanlan’s enterprise of around 2,000Ha is based near Goondiwindi.
Conversations on the US tour led the group to find common interest and frustration in our ability to source new, high yielding crop varieties, particularly wheat, which are simply suited to the livestock consumption market. Many “feed” varieties were outdated, and most current higher yielding wheats were bred for the milling market. Whilst our Australian wheat breeding companies are doing a sensational job of developing milling class wheats, we could not help but wonder if there were some varieties out there which simply don’t make the cut for milling, but consistently outyield other varieties – so why not investigate and bring them to market unclassified, yet still good enough for H2.
Enter Borlaug 100
Yes, maybe it’s and obscure name, but the namesake refers to Norman Borlaug, the founder og the largest wheat breeding program in the world, CIMMYT.
He is kniwn for saving more lives than any other person of all time, for his work on improving wheat yields around the globe. Norman has now gone, but his legacy remains as the work at CIMMYT continues. They wanted to honour the centenary of his life by naming a wheat line after him – do you think that they would choose a dud? No, they chose the absolute best line they had and called it Borlaug 100, and PBR’d it in Mexico – fun fact, once a variety is PBR’d anywhere in the world, all other countries must adopt the name!
That was good enough for Rebel Seeds to take a closer look. Since 2016 Rebel Seeds has been testing Borlaug 100’s yield against current wheat varieties and have continued searching for suitable successors of Borlaug 100. To date, we haven’t seen any varieties that have consistently out yielded Borlaug 100. That’s not to say that Borlaug always out yields everything… the NVT will attest to that, but we invite you to look at the 3 years worth of yield data that we have extracted from the NVT and you will see that on average, in the Southern QLD and Northern NSW sites, Borlaug 100 is the most consistent performer out there.
Borlaug 100 harvested grains.
High protein low screenings.
Exceptional yields in the early Borlaug in the Dulacca and Condamine area considering the season.
2019
Borlaug yields as a percentage of average
120.66
Mungindi SWQ
116.12
Dalby SEQ
103.79
Merriwa N/E
113.85
Tulloona N/W