New quality wheat varieties enable farmers to be quick off the mark in responding to market signals, says AHDB Market Intelligence.
With a trend towards more high-yielding milling varieties on the Recommended Lists, growers have new flexibility on in-season crop management decisions depending on the financial incentive to grow for a higher protein specification.
An analysis of data from the AHDB Cereals Quality Survey (CQS) released today compares protein performance of established milling wheats with the Group 1 variety Skyfall, which reached its first commercial harvest this year.
Amandeep Kaur Purewal, AHDB Market Intelligence Senior Analyst, said: “A key question we wanted to answer was whether high milling wheat yields come at the expense of protein content – a key influencer of the net-price received by farmers.
“Results have shown that the protein content of commercially grown Skyfall was similar to that of some of the more established milling wheat varieties this harvest. However, as we are only dealing with protein data from one year (2015), we must wait to see the influence of further growing seasons before drawing concrete conclusions.”
Statistical tests were carried out on data from thousands of samples covered by the CQS.
The analysis showed that:
- Skyfall’s protein content was below that of Crusoe at the GB level and across the regions, and was shown to be significantly different. Crusoe achieves the highest total protein levels of the quality varieties on the Recommended Lists
- Despite being lower at the GB level, Skyfall had a similar protein content to Gallant in the South East, East, South West and North
- A similar total protein content was seen between Skyfall and Cordiale in the East and Midlands
- Skyfall had a similar protein content versus Solstice in the South East
With big wheat yields from the last two harvests, wheat protein has been the limiting quality factor. Final CQS results showed 37% of nabim Group 1 samples met the minimum 13% protein requirement for the full specification grade, compared with 90% and 92% for Hagberg and specific weight, respectively.
Dr Purewal said: “In anticipation of its strong potential yield it is possible that farmers applied more fertiliser to Skyfall to try and counter the protein dilution effect, which would be expected with higher yielding varieties. If this is the case, and given that breeders have made advances in the yields of quality breadmaking varieties, this could change the way in which farmers respond to the milling premium.
“Due to the yield differences between feed and milling types, the traditional response to the premium has been to change variety. Now, the effect of reduced yield differences could be to inform faster in-season crop nutrition decisions based on whether it is in fact worth going for higher protein, targeting a lower grade or indeed selling the crop as feed.”
While the protein content of wheat has been grabbing the headlines over the past two years, the functionality of the protein is just as, if not more, important than the amount of protein. In 2012, the average GB wheat protein content was 12.5%, the highest in the past nine years, but the functionality was poor and so was of limited to use to millers.
“Perhaps, in the future there needs to be more emphasis by buyers on the quality of milling wheat protein rather than just its quantity? It could be argued that the market signal on milling wheat protein is ‘lost in translation’ in the supply chain with bakers needing quality protein but farmers being paid on a content basis due to the relative ease and pace of testing at intake,” Dr Purewal added.
