CEREALS will give some indication as to how new varieties are performing down amongst the crop plots. Here’s a few of the highlights:

Seven up from Syngenta

Seven new cereal varieties will be showcased by Syngenta – six new barleys and a new winter wheat.

The new wheat, SY Insitor, is a high-yielding feeder with a wide drilling window. Currently on the AHDB candidate variety list, if recommended SY Insitor will join the ranks of winter feed wheats Syngenta has introduced over recent years.

Continuing its progress in hybrid barley breeding are three new varieties – SY Kingsbarn and SY Baracooda were both added to the AHDB Recommended List for 2019/20, while the third new hybrid, SY Kingston, is a ‘candidate’.

New malting barleys on trial include a winter variety which is hoping to gain malting approval. The high-yielding Electrum is currently classified as Provisional Approval 1 for brewing use on the MBC Approved List of varieties, but Syngenta hopes it will be upgraded to ‘malting’.

Also in the malting sector, two new spring barleys with malting potential, SY Tungsten and SY Splendor, will be shown in the plots.

RAGT’s birthday ‘party’

Visitors to the RAGT stand will see the company kick off its centenary celebrations in plant breeding.

It has evolved from a regional co-operative in southern France to Europe’s leading plant breeder, responsible for a range of major varieties such as Skyfall, RGT Gravity, RGT Planet and RGT Windozz.

Visitors will also be able to view a fascinating collection of variety plots on the RAGT stand, featuring some historic varieties like Squareheads Master, Yeoman, Capelle Desprez, Wigeon, Maris Huntsman and other bringing to life the developments in plant genetics over the past century.

But RAGT’s new key varieties will also be on show, like the new wheat variety, RGT Gravity, the highest yielding Group 4 hard winter wheat on the 2019/20 Recommended List and its Group 1 milling wheat, RGT Skyfall, the UK’s most widely grown winter wheat.

The newcomer, RGT Saki, is a high yielding soft Group 4 candidate variety that exhibits outstanding disease resistance as well as midge resistance, plus good grain quality, while staff will also talk about RGT Lantern, a high-yielding hard Recommended List candidate feed variety with solid disease and OWBM resistance.

Its spring barley, RGT Planet, is the joint highest yielding spring barley on the RL that is fully approved for brewing. It is the leading spring barley in the UK and the most widely grown cereal variety in the world this year.

RGT Asteroid is the only spring barley on the Recommended List that is provisionally approved for all three end markets – brewing, grain distilling and malt distilling, while the winter oat, RGT Southwark, is the highest yielder on the 2019/20 List, at 105%.

Also, growers will be able to quiz RAGT staff on its innovative oilseed rape selling scheme, which is designed to take some of the risk out of growing the crop whereby growers will only have to pay royalties on the area of oilseed rape that establishes. Three varieties, RGT Azurite, RGT Quizz and RGT Nizza CL, are eligible.

LG varieties in

the Spotlight

Some of the highest yielding cereals and oilseed rape varieties on the 2019/20 AHDB Recommended List will be on Limagrain’s stand.

Its soft wheat, LG Skyscraper, is the UK’s highest yielding wheat, with LG Spotlight sitting just behind, while the oilseed rape, Aspire, sits at the top of the UK OSR List, based on its gross output, and the winter barleys’, LG Flynn and LG Mountain, share the top position in the two-row section.

Aspire also offers turnip yellows virus (TuYV) resistance – the first time that a UK Recommended variety has offered both high yields and TuYV resistance. With good all round disease resistance, a 7 for light leaf spot, a 6 for phoma and good tolerance of verticillium wilt, this should make it a good choice for early drilling.

Another variety of interest, the six-row winter barley, Rafaela, has the unique traits of both barley yellow dwarf virus and barley yellow mosaic virus tolerance.

Bayer concentrates

on OSR

Bayer will highlight its four Dekalb variety successors to top oilseed rape varieties on its stand.

OSR will be a particular focus following the acquisition of Monsanto and its market-leading Dekalb programme in 2018.

On display will be four natural successors to farmer favourites, DK Extrovert and DK Exalte – DK Exstar; newly-Recommended DK Expansion and DK Exsteel; and DK Extremus, which is currently in National List testing. Up-and-coming Clearfield varieties, DK Impressario CL, clubroot resistant DK Platinium and the new HOLL, V353OL, will also feature.

Alongside these will be a demonstration of Bayer’s new fungicidal OSR seed treatment (sold in Ireland as Scenic Gold (fluopicolide + fluoxastrobin)) and for which registration is being sought in the UK.

Senova’s new stars

Newly recommended winter and spring cereal varieties will be displayed by Senova.

Joining the company’s existing variety portfolio are Valerie, a two-row winter feed barley and the new spring barley, Cosmopolitan, potentially for brewing/malting. Also featured for the first time since its approval is Hexham, a Group 4 spring wheat.

All four were added to the AHDB Recommended List 2019/20 at the end of last year, with UK-wide suitability.