THE FIRST salvoes in the fight to get a bigger share of the oilseed rape market for next year are already being fired, with a leading figure in the seed trade saying that this season’s new oilseed rape candidates are falling short of the mark set by existing varieties.

United Oilseeds technical manager, Richard Elsdon, says that gross output results now in from 10 of this year’s 11 East and West region trial sites show that pure line and hybrid RL leaders are failing to be upstaged by candidate varieties.

Amongst the pure line varieties, a treated gross output of 105.9% puts DK Cabernet just ahead of its most promising rival, Sesame at 105.8%, with existing Recommendation, Fashion (104.1%) not far behind.

And PR46W21, at 110.4%, stands well clear of leading hybrid contenders, Rhino (107.4%), Compass (106%) and Palace (105.7%) which are only just above long-standing Excalibur (104.9%).

“It’s only one year, but the 2010 trials are the first chance we’ve had to directly compare candidate varieties with established RL leaders,” he points out. “I have to say that the candidates really don’t seem to offer anything in the way of a significant improvement. Certainly not the sort of superiority the National List (NL) results might have suggested.”