As interest grows in emerging crops, one such crop, sesame, could become as big as mungbeans and chickpeas.

CQ University senior lecturer in agriculture Dr Tieneke Trotter said she did not sesame becoming the major industry of any area.

“We see it fitting into a cropping rotation, it fits really neatly into a cotton rotation where producers are growing cotton and are looking for an alternative or a rotation type crop,” she said.

As interest grows in emerging crops, one such crop, sesame, could become as big as mungbeans and chickpeas.

CQ University senior lecturer in agriculture Dr Tieneke Trotter said she did not sesame becoming the major industry of any area.

“We see it fitting into a cropping rotation, it fits really neatly into a cotton rotation where producers are growing cotton and are looking for an alternative or a rotation type crop,” she said.

“We see it fitting into the sugar rotation as well (and) we see it potentially becoming the size of something that could be similar to maybe chickpeas or mungbeans or even sunflowers in its day.”

Dr Trotter said as sesame was an oil seed crop it could be used as a whole seed, but pressed for oil.

“We are importing all of the sesame that we’re using here in Australia and so we would like to replace those imports with domestic production,” she said.

“But, there is also opportunity to be exporting…because there is an increasing demand for sesame oil globally.”

Dr Trotter said there was a small scale commercial crop in Cairns on a couple of hectares, and another in the Burdekin on 10ha.

“At the moment, those crops are looking really good and we’re working with some fantastic growers in those areas, who are really attentive to new challenges and new crops, and they are having some really good successes with them,” she said.

“I imagine that we could have more crops probably within proximity to our research trials.

“We’re looking at getting a small scale commercial crop grown in Emerald this summer and then hopefully over the summer seasons, we’re going to look at expanding the number of very small scale commercial growers to see how people cope with the crop and manage it.”

Dr Trotter said they did not want people going out and planting 200 ha to sesame and having it fail.

“We want to step into and provide the supports required to producers to feel confident to grow it and then work with their neighbours to share that knowledge and then…see the industry expand,” she said.

The goal, Dr Trotter said, was to have enough information, seed lines and markets developed concurrently with the research.

“We’re not developing markets within the research program, but we have got ASIDA (the Australian Sesame Industry Development Association)…looking to develop markets for producers,” she said.

“So hopefully by 2027/2028, we will have a small, but emerged commercial industry that is levied.”

Dr Trotter reiterated that once sesame had settled in as a commercial crop it had the potential to be as big as mungbeans and chickpeas.

As part of their research, Dr Trotter said they had found sesame was best grown where it was quite warm.

“So, we’ve got the opportunity in central Queensland to grow it, but really only in summer. The further north that we go we can grow it up into, say, the Burdekin, up into far north Queensland, across into the Northern Territory and into Kununurra in Western Australia,” she said.

“We are growing it all year round, it can be a winter and a summer crop.

“If we move further south, say, northern NSW or even down into central NSW into some of those cropping areas, in the future we’re going to trial in those areas and see if we can grow it as a summer crop in those regions as well.”

Dr Trotter, who is also an agronomist, said sesame definitely liked the heat and did not like going under about 10 degrees celsius, and to get it out of the ground, the soil needed to be about 20 degrees celsius.

At the moment, she said they were still doing agronomic trials so they could give the best information they could to producers in order for them to grow a really successful crop.

As well as in Emerald and Tully in Queensland, there were trials in Katherine in NT and Kununurra.

Trials were also set to run in south-east Queensland this year and in northern NSW next summer, with trails possibly in the Wagga region the year after.

Dr Trotter said the advantages of sesame as a rotation crop was that it used low moisture compared to cotton and sugar cane.

“It needs water to get established, but then it can grow on reasonably low moisture,” she said.

“We’re also doing some studies on breaking the cycles of different diseases, particularly root nematodes.

“It appears anecdotally that at this stage that it could be a good break crop for root nematodes. It’s a different plant type to most of the other crops that are grown and so it’s likely to attract different pests and diseases.”

Dr Trotter is the program lead of the CRC for Developing Northern Australia funded, Great Northern Spice project, and Agrifutures Australia funded, National Sesame Industry Research program.

She said the two programs combined under the banner of Sesame Central, which was looking to do the agronomic research that would enable sesame to be an emerged industry, hopefully, in the next five years.