Are growers making the most of the Recommended List?

Is the Recommended List a valuable tool for today’s growers when choosing varieties? How is the information in the list best used and on what basis should varieties be chosen?

At a recent briefing hosted by plant breeders Limagrain UK, marketing director, Lee Robinson, was adamant that the RL list was indeed a very valuable tool in making the correct variety choices. Mr Robinson emphasised the need for growers to make full use of the wealth of information on the list: "Farmers have never had more information or choice available to them. For example in 1981 there were only six fully recommended wheat varieties against 20 in 2011! Also to take into account is that back in 1981, 50% of wheat varieties were bred by PBI whereas today we have varieties from seven breeders and agents on the list which obviously offers a much wider genetic base to choose from."

For Mark Glew, senior barley breeder with Limagrain, the RL for barley varieties has certainly evolved in a user-friendly way: "When making variety choices for barley, the market will be pre-determined and the RL works with this as varietal characteristics will be ranked differently dependant on the segment target. Geography tends to dictate what market to grow for with the Scottish region having a distilling focus, most of the east of the UK, brewing, the south for export with the north-west growing predominantly for feed – this creates a very regionalised spread of required characteristics."

"What is important however," emphasises Mr Glew, "is that whilst yield is king, these ’additional characteristics’ can and do offer improvements for growers. For example, this year, Limagrain has three variety candidates in the HGCA RL trials, Overture, Chronicle and Odyssey all of which have demonstrated high yields, but also excellent disease resistance and potential suitability for both brewing and distilling. Overture looks particularly promising, and is yielding 6% above Quench in RL trials this year."

With regards to wheat variety choice, Ron Granger, wheat breeder for Limagrain believes that consistency, not just in one season but year after year is the key attribute for a variety to offer. "Each variety is so unique and individual that we have to pull out every bit of detail we can to make sure the variety is placed on farm in the correct situation, producing consistent results not just in terms of yield but also good husbandry attributes and also a product that fulfils the requirement of the end market."

"Testing this requires a great amount of work, and whilst the RL will carry data based over three years, as breeders we have had that variety in our own Limagrain trials for five-six years. We will also have yield data from farmer trials which are based around using farmer’s inputs rather than based on the HGCA protocol."

"Our breeding philosophy is to produce a product that has an end-use and is commercially viable for growers; indeed the success of the Warburton’s Crusoe contract demonstrates this, with 40,000 tonnes of milling wheat already being sold in its first year!"

Nick Wall, independent agronomist and partner in the Crop Management Group, works closely with his clients when making variety choices, an activity that starts in earnest around the time of Cereals: "We need to have the confidence in the consistency of a variety to deliver be it a milling or feed wheat - and this is where it is crucial that we as agronomists really understand where a particular variety is best placed to perform - financially, physically and agronomically for that given farm situation – and to do this we need to have as much data and information available to us as possible on a national and regional level."

Mr Wall does not work simply on yield to guide his variety decisions but works through a thorough set of figures to produce a gross margin for each variety. "For example, I will give a financial value to disease resistance ratings. So for a Group 3 like Invicta, this will do pretty well as it not only yields well but has robust disease resistance ratings – and has done very well this year. Stigg is another variety that has excellent disease resistance and has also performed well."

"Ultimately it comes down to knowing what market you are aiming for, matching varietal differences to a given situation and fine tuning the data available from the HGCA with local and regional data on that variety."