By Brian Henderson

For arable farmers around the country, it’s currently the season to get along to the annual round of crop trials which have been taking place across the country in recent weeks.

As the organisers will no doubt be aware, attendance at these events is often dependant on the weather. Too wet and few, other than the really nerdy, are keen to stand around in the rain looking at marginally different varieties – too dry and folk tend to be busy with silage, hay or the hundred and one other jobs that have to be done whenever a weather window rears its head.

So, I guess those who selflessly devote time to organising such events hope for a Goldilocks spell, where the weather is just right – not too dreich to put people off coming, but hasn’t been dry for long enough to let them get started on another job.

But while the chances of getting these ideal conditions might be slim after the met office figures revealed that many of us have seen the wettest June on record falling hard on the heels of driest ever April and May, it’s a pretty safe bet that enough farmers will usually turn up at a set of crop trials to make the effort worthwhile.

I guess for those who turn up religiously, the event has an air of a trip to the races – providing an opportunity to get the low down on the latest tip for the top for our businesses a bit ahead of the rest of the pack.

And, while it might be unfair to liken the knowledgeable experts who talk us through the pros and cons of new varieties to racecourse tipsters, there’s never any harm in trying to get as much inside information on a newcomer, from whatever stable, before you back it with a big wad of your hard-earned cash.

There’s no doubt that while some new varieties might come in a nose ahead of the competition, there are often many runners in the barley and wheat stakes which fall at the first fence – and no one wants to wager a packet on something that won’t make the grade.

But the question has to be asked – what are we actually looking for in a new variety when we go to these trials?

And, I guess, the answer has for many years been pretty simple – greater yield. For it’s been a long held convention yet it’s a brave man who would buck this trend and focus on other attributes such as resistance to disease and stress.

But with an uncertain future and a dwindling armoury of crop chemicals to work with – far fewer of which now seem to do ‘exactly what it says on the tin’ without having to mix and match to prevent disease resistance – the time for change might be upon us.

There has been a recognition of this amongst those who conduct the trials and who assess the merit of new varieties. There’s lately been a greater emphasis placed on this side of the recommended lists and other tables of performance which help us to judge what might just be the next winner.

There is still an underlying feeling, however, that any additional disease resistance or earlier maturity in a variety is still viewed as a bit of a side issue by the actual breeders as they, too, continue to follow what we, the people who buy their new varieties, seem to want and ‘go with the money’ and focus on yield.

So, the onus might be on us as growers to push the message a bit harder that we might be willing to sacrifice a small improvement in yield if other benefits can be achieved.

Great strides have been made in recent years and scientists are doing a wonderful job of unscrambling not only the underlying genetic code which contributes to the various characteristics we consider desirable, but also how these interact, how they are linked with other factors and where they are situated on individual chromosomes.

While any commercial benefits from such research always seem to be about five years away – close enough to tantalise us, yet far enough away to save us getting our hopes up too far – they hold the real promise of combining a number of traits in one plant.

Gene markers and other new techniques can certainly be used as an important tool in filtering out a lot of the ‘misses’ in the screening process during conventional breeding programmes, which does speed things up a bit.

However, you can’t help but feel that scientists in this country are working with one hand tied behind their backs when they are unable to use the full armoury of genetic engineering approaches – which is ridiculous given that current procedures simply address traits already inherent in a plant.

This approach is a totally different ball game from the earlier GM work which tended to transfer genes from a completely different taxonomic group, an approach which has tarred the whole area with undercurrents of Frankenstein and a desire to play God.

But whereas early GM methods might have been likened to a blunderbuss approach, the newer, more refined approach equates more to a surgeon’s scalpel.

The focus is now more on honing traits already exhibited in a crop but which are either over-ruled by other genes or are somehow inhibited from being expressed.

Given these advances, though, there is at least some hope that we can combine a lot of the characteristics we are looking for in one plant, giving us something that’s ‘just right’.

And maybe if this Goldilocks image was pushed a bit harder, we might finally manage to bury the Frankenstein legacy.