AUTUMN cultivation difficulties mean that an increase in spring barley area is on the cards for next year.

AHDB predictions are for another big area of spring barley in the UK in 2018, possibly even bigger than in 2017, as spring barley remains the spring crop of choice for farmers getting planted up following a difficult autumn, especially in Scotland, pointed out Jack Watts, of AHDB.

But, given that weather induced swing in Scotland and the black-grass control reasons south of the Border, it's not good news. “The increase in spring barley area has created an oversupply and farmers ought to be budgeting for the fact that feed barley prices are likely to remain some way below that of feed wheat," he said.

“Increasingly, the UK now has more than enough malting quality barley for domestic use and exports. As such, we often see malting barley that does not have a contract find itself in the feed market.

“The quality issues last harvest helped to support malting premiums, but if farmers are budgeting on selling malting barley, then they ought to consider the contracts on offer and using a pricing mechanism that suits.”

Mr Watts recognised that in some regions straw from spring barley provides a significant boost to gross margin, but added that it’s a regional issue, given its bulk nature and cost of transport.

All of this underlines the importance of making the right choice of variety that meets market requirements, and also performs on farm, pointed out Les Daubney, of Limagrain UK.

“This season really tested many spring barley varieties, with long periods of very dry weather to begin with – and varieties that withstood the spring drought, delivered high yields. There will be tendency to choose these varieties again," he argued.

“However, it’s not enough to choose to grow these varieties on their yields alone, it’s really important to choose varieties that the end-users will buy, so do your research well.

“We work closely with growers and end users to ensure that we are bringing varieties to the market that offer top yields, but also with a flexibility of marketing options and solid on-farm agronomics.”

“Any grower aiming for the malt or grain distilling market should be aware that some barley varieties produce glycosidic nitriles (GN) at high levels when they are malted and ethyl carbamate when the malt is distilled. Because these compounds are potentially harmful, non-GN varieties are preferred by the end-user, so this is something to bear in mind when selecting varieties.”

Sienna is a high yielding, non-GN, malting spring barley, which carries IBD approval for malt distilling use.

Yielding 104% over control, Sienna sits at the top of the AHDB Recommend List yield results for 2017 along with RGT Planet and Laureate.

“What sets Sienna apart from these varieties is its specific weight which sits way above benchmark ‘quality varieties’ such as Concerto and Propino,” added Limagrain's technical manager, Ron Granger. “The significance of this is that Sienna is the first variety that offers both high yields and good specific weight, which until now has not been possible to achieve as grain quality usually suffers as a consequence of high yields.

“Varieties with good specific weight appear to be more robust against stress such as drought and this is something that we have seen clearly with Sienna last year. We know that farmers like to grow big, bold samples and, like wheat varieties, a good specific weight would appear to be more robust especially in time of stress or erratic weather patterns, and we have seen this effect from Sienna,” he argued.

“It’s also a high tillering variety, so it is able to compensate for tillers that are lost early in the season, without too much impact on final yield. Varieties with high tillering and good specific weight always do well in drought conditions.”

Mike Dagg, of Simpsons Malt, in Berwick-upon-Tweed, pointed out that Sienna competed favourably in the market place. “It was one of the highest yielding spring barley varieties last season and also delivered in terms of quality,” he said.

“This quality was confirmed in our own malting tests – grain size was good and feedback from farmers was that Sienna looked really good in the field ‘like malting barley should'. For all of these reasons, it is currently our intention to increase the volumes of Sienna we purchase in 2018,” he said.

On farm, Sienna exhibited many of the positive traits associated with the feed variety Westminster – is relatively taller strawed, like Concerto, but offered good resistance to lodging and brackling.

The variety also has a good disease resistance profile, said Douglas Bonn, of Nickerson, who is seeing a lot of interest in the variety in Scotland. "It’s a really useful variety on farm that also has some excellent marketing attributes."

It’s for these reasons that Richard Fairley, Shields, Larbert, near Falkirk, is increasing his acreage of Sienna, having grown 10 ha as a small trial in 2016. “We were impressed with how it performed in terms of yield, quality and the amount of good straw that we got off the crop, so in 2017 we upped the number of hectares to 70. Next year it will increase again to 80 ha.

“In what was a really difficult year, we were again delighted with the results, which averaged just over 8t/ha across the good and poor fields. Despite the season, the crop managed to hold onto the quality – in fact Scotgrain remarked that it was some of the best samples that they got last year – so this year our whole malting barley area will go down to Sienna and we have a contract once again with Scotgrain.”

TABLE: Barley specific weights

Variety Specific weight (kg/hl)

Sienna 70.4

Concerto 68.8

Propino 68

RGT Planet 67.6

Laureate 66.1

KWS Irina 65.8

Chanson 65.4

Dioptric 68.2

KWS Sassy 67.8

Ovation 66.1

*Source AHDB RL 2017/18