Potential Northern Australia spices trial harvesting at Katherine
In late November 2025, trials of sesame and fennel that were associated with 2 ongoing research projects, Great Northern Spices and AgriFutures Sesame research and development program, were harvested at Katherine Research Station (KRS).
They were both harvested by hand (transects) and by machine (cue harvester).
The air was thick with the scent of aniseed as the harvester moved through the fennel crop collecting the seeds.
Project objectives
The Great Northern Spices project aims to provide environment specific industry recommendations and knowledge to integrate spice crops into both new and existing farming systems.
This includes planting protocols, weed and pest management, machinery use for planting to ensure optimal crop emergence, harvesting, drying and seed cleaning.
Themes and participation
Research themes include:
- enabling agronomy
- mechanisation
- harvest quality assurance
- post-harvest processing
- economic protocols
- value chain protocols
- export protocols
- extension
- communication.
Great Northern Spices is funded by Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia and led by Central Queensland University (CQUniversity).
The NT Government is collaborating in this research and has been running summer (sesame only) and winter (sesame, fennel, and kalonji) trials at KRS for the last 3 years.
So far, sesame and fennel have been showing promising yield potential over the years in trials at KRS as Kalonji seems not to perform well.
AgriFutures Sesame research and development program aims to overcome the major production and post-harvest challenges of growing sesame in Australia through a collaborative program addressing 6 research themes focusing on:
- Crop protection.
- Nutrient, irrigation and water management.
- Farming systems and modelling.
- Southern production.
- Crop establishment and harvesting mechanisation.
- Post-harvest seed storage and harvesting.
NT Department of Agriculture and Fisheries are participating in theme 6.
Results and crop potential
Themes aim to provide research into the post-harvest management of sesame seeds during storage and the outcome will be a manual for 'best management practices for post-harvest handling and storage'.
The project is funded by AgriFutures Australia and led by CQUniversity. University of Queensland are the leaders of theme 6 and the NT Government are collaborating partners.
These projects along with earlier research 'Spicing up the North' identified sesame’s potential to be grown successfully in the NT with white non-shuttering variety having a better yield potential than black.
Some of the advantages of sesame as a potential broadacre crop for NT is its capacity to grow well in both wet (rainfed) and dry season (irrigated), and its newly incorporated non-shuttering trait that will make it easy to be harvested using machines.
Caption: cue harvester ready to harvest fennel seed.
