Varieties suited to the North

"There are four new high yielding cereal varieties from Syngenta to choose from on the new AHDB Recommended Lists – two winter feed wheats, a hybrid winter feed barley, and a spring malting barley.

“The first of our new high yielding winter feed wheats is the hard endosperm variety, Shabras. Like the popular hard winter feed wheat, Graham, which we launched earlier this year, Shabras also has good disease resistance and a high untreated yield and is quite early maturing.

"However, what differentiates it is its later drilling. As a quick developing variety, it doesn’t need to be planted early, so is quite a traditional wheat in that regard. Shabras also looks good in the second cereal position,” she added.

"Our second new winter feed wheat on the List, Savello, differs from Shabras in being a soft endosperm variety. It is appealing because it has been accepted for distilling and is very high yielding in the North – an area noted for distilling. So it is an exciting option for the North.

"In the winter feed barley sector, a new Syngenta hybrid, Hyvido Sunningdale, joins Syngenta’s three other Hyvido hybrids on the AHDB Recommended List –Bazooka, Belfry and Volume," she said.

“Its key feature is that, in the North, it is even higher yielding than Bazooka, which set the bar for winter barley yields. It is also slightly earlier maturing than Bazooka, which will also be useful for the North. That said, it is on a par with Bazooka for yield generally, so it’s not just a Northern option,” she pointed out.

"Finally, a new high yielding spring malting barley variety, Dioptric, adds to the expanding number of spring barley varieties from Syngenta targeted at distilling. Dioptric is under test for grain distilling, as opposed to malt distilling which our Laureate is targeted at," she added.