AN ‘ideal for Scotland’ hybrid winter barley looks set to take a sizeable chunk of the market north of the Border after this harvest.
Hyvido Sunningdale is a six-row which has excelled in harsher conditions and poorer soils for its breeder, Syngenta, and its high yield, six-row leading grain quality and other agronomic benefits offer a significant return on the extra cost of the seed, it said.
While its seed costs might be £40 per ha ahead of most conventional winter barleys, at £105 per ha, Syngenta’s Sam Brooke, its head of seed and seed treatments, pointed out that it delivers on a range of criteria.
“In the North region of the AHDB’s Recommended List trials, Sunningdale is 4% higher yielding than the next best hybrid, Bazooka and 6% ahead of the best conventional variety, Funky,” she said.
“However, a project run through information gatherer, Ag-space, has shown that its benefits go far beyond the fact that it is high yielding and with good quality grain.
“Because it is very early – it is at least one month earlier than any wheat and three days before any conventional winter barley – it offers an ideal entry into oilseed rape.”
With Scottish growers going against the grain and maintaining their acreage of OSR, this is important, she pointed out, as the early entry date has been shown to improve the subsequent rape crop’s yield significantly.
“While this can be explained mainly by the earlier sowing date, we are also convinced that the special rooting ability of Sunningdale breaks up the ground to allow easier entry for the following OSR crop’s roots, making establishment quicker and stronger. We’ll be collecting more data this harvest to prove that.”

The Scottish Farmer:
Syngenta data has already proven that including the Hyvido winter barley in a three-way rotation with winter wheat and oilseed rape, can return a £63.60 per ha advantage over a conventional barley in the same rotation, pointed our Ms Brooke.
The yield stats for Scotland are quite compelling, with Sunningdale having an average trial yield of 10.88 tonnes per ha, which is 0.5 tonnes ahead of the big Scottish favourite Volume, and more than one tonne ahead of Glacier, Tower and Cassia.
Grain quality is also a plus. “It has some great figures for a six-row, especially in Scotland where it is significantly ahead of the national figures. Using data from Scottish sites alone, the average specific weight is 68.9 kg/hl and with much lower screenings,” said Ms Brooke.
Another plus point in Scotland is its straw yield.With an average straw height of 107cm – even with PGR – it produces 20% more straw than Glacier, for instance.
She reminded growers, though, that its aggressive growth can catch out conventional spring spray timings and it does need a very early input of nitrogen to get the most out of it. This might mean that it is not suitable for urea as a feed, given that temperatures might be too cool at that time.
A robust T2 spray is also advised, but again it could be more than two weeks earlier than ‘normal’. That said, it has an untreated yield of 91% of controls, which is in the top bracket.