By Brian Henderson

With farmers increasingly keen to see how new varieties perform in a range of conditions and under both ‘treated’ and ‘untreated’ management regimes, a wide range of trial sites has become an important tool to help growers select new varieties suited to their own systems.

In response to this, last autumn, Limagrain – whose stable currently includes the leading oilseed rape varieties in the recommended list along with some of the top performing wheat and barley varieties – invested in a wide range of new demonstration trials sites, whilst also maintaining those that were already a well recognised feature of the farming landscape. One new site is located just outside Perth.

“We put the plots in hoping that by this summer we would once again be able to come together for what we believe is a really valuable exercise in helping growers make the best informed variety choices, and one that has not been possible for the last year,” said William Charlton, Limagrain UK's arable marketing manager as the company hosted a crop trials day at the new site.

“We were delighted, therefore, in the interest from both growers and the seed trade to our open day this past week, where we had the opportunity to showcase our Northern variety portfolio and share the results of our work on how to get the best out of these varieties on-farm.”

Claiming that the company’s OSR genetics were the strongest and most robust that any breeder had seen for a long time, Limagrain’s arable development officer, Liam Wilkinson told growers and the seed trade: “Our focus on using genetics to mitigate risk in the oilseed rape crop has been very successful and is fully reflected in the current RL for the North where LG varieties hold the top six positions.”

He said that the breeding program had focused on issues relevant specifically to northern conditions and challenges: “For example none of our varieties have less than a score of 6 for light leaf spot and our trait-loaded approach offers pod shatter, turnip yellows virus (TuYV) and RLM7 resistances.”

Mr Wilkinson said LG varieties had proven themselves consistently over seasons and continued to deliver the yields that growers had come to expect. Listing some of the varieties, he said Aurelia was the top yielding variety for the north at 106% of control. This hybrid, he said, combined genetic TuYV, pod shatter and RLM7 phoma resistance with the highest light leaf spot rating available on the Recommended List.

LG Aviron was Limagrain’s newest fully loaded hybrid to receive full UK recommendation and joined the RL as joint highest yielding variety at 105% of control. He said the variety had shown robustness and consistency throughout testing and, being a vigorous hybrid, could establish well in challenging seedbeds.

Acacia, the highest yielding conventional variety on the list, offered key agronomic characteristics of strong autumn and spring vigour, solid disease resistance and short, stiff straw, combined with a high oil content, he pointed out.

Aardvark, an early flowering variety, also had high vigour and the best disease package out of the recommended conventional varieties with 103% yield for the North, while Aspire was a variety well suited to early sowing and was the only recommended conventional variety with crucial TuYV resistance.

Giving a rundown of some of the company’s wheat varieties, arable technical manager, Ron Granger, said LG Astronomer was the 'star of the show', with high specific weight, and an all-round agronomic package which gave the variety the sort of resilience under different seasons which growers were looking for.

“LG Illuminate is also popular in the North and has performed very well in the earlier drilling scenario and has a solid specific weight of 76.6 kg/hl, combined with good sprouting resistance.” He said the variety met specification for distilling and export, as well as being a biscuit wheat, offering growers in the north a wide range of market opportunities.

From the Group 4 wheats, Mr Granger said LG Skyscraper remained the highest-yielding winter wheat available on the RL and continued to deliver this across all situations: “It has bold grain quality with a high specific weight, and it is widely used by distillers and in soft grists, giving LG Skyscraper multiple market outlets.” For Scottish growers, its earlier maturing was an important attribute.

“Well established soft wheat LG Spotlight also continues to be popular as a soft wheat variety for distilling, with excellent grain quality for securing end use premiums. Its high stable Hagberg combined with sprouting resistance and a great specific weight should not be underestimated for the north, where harvest can be catchy at the best of times.”

He also said that the new hard wheat variety, LG Typhoon, had potentially one of the highest septoria resistance scores which made it suitable for the North, adding that it worked across wide drilling windows, including earlier drilling.

Of Limagrain’s winter barley varieties, LG Mountain was still at the top end of the highest yielding two-rows at 104% of control and, according to Mr Granger, appeared to be the one to beat in the North (105) with earlier maturity again being valuable for Scotland. “LG Mountain has consistently produced these high yields, since it was brought to the market in 2016, right through to 2020 – which is now recognised to be one of the most challenging growing seasons for many years,” he said. "This is a really important attribute in a variety, as growers know that whatever the season throws at them, it is able to cope.”

On the spring barley front, the well-tested Diablo now full approval for both brewing and distilling. In Scottish trials, at an average yield of 8.07 t/ha, it had been top for treated yield in trials undertaken by Scottish Agronomy on five different sites across the Borders, Fife, Aberdeenshire and Easter Ross over three years (2018-2020). And at 7.23 t/ha, it also topped the untreated yield league.

Stating that the newer, higher yielding malting barley varieties respond well to the higher nitrogen levels, as nitrogen grain content dilution was achievable, he said that on sites with good nutrition recent research had shown that N applications could be pushed to 150kg/ha without significantly altering barley nitrogen levels if the doses were split between 120 kg/ha in the seedbed, plus an additional 30 kg/ha at tillering.