Save on transport costs with Hilleshog
With nearly 40% market share of this year's national sugar beet crop, sugar beet breeder Hilleshog remains confident that it can provide growers with what they need to produce a profitable crop. The key issue of rising transport costs is countered by both higher sugar content varieties and the significant and proven benefits of the new Hilleshog root shape – delivering lower dirt and crown tares as well as easier and more efficient harvesting.
To demonstrate how much can be saved on transport costs by choosing a Hilleshog variety, a 'ready-reckoner' on the Hilleshog (Syngenta Seeds) stand at Cereals 2008 will allow growers to enter their likely production in tonnes and the distance to the factory, to calculate the reduction in lorry numbers and potential cost savings. All will be backed up by independent research.
"Encouragingly, growers appear to be paying proper attention to varieties that make the biggest contribution to profit," said Richard Powell, Syngenta's UK sugar beet crop manager. "Our varieties are arguably providing them with the best opportunities. In addition to high yield, high sugar and low bolting susceptibility, the Hilleshog low tare root shape which is common to all our varieties, has been proven to help growers to get more adjusted tonnes on each and every load. With the current issues of transport costs and efficiency, this is a very significant benefit and our transport cost calculator will prove the point."
Trial plots at CEREALS 2008 will showcase the Recommended favourites to achieve these savings - Trinita, Opta and Alota – as well as the newly recommended Tempest. Also on show will be a new double tolerant variety due for recommendation in 2010.
Trinita - the top performing variety on the NIAB 2008 Recommended List - is also the top-selling variety for 2008, taking 18% of total UK seed sales for this year. On the newly released 2009 Recommended List – Trinita, Alota and Opta all show very high yields (103.9 adjusted tonnes), high sugar contents (all over 18%) and are among the least susceptible to bolting from either early and normal sowings (with quoted figures of less than 0.5% bolters/thousand plants for early sowing and 0% for normal sowing).
Tempest – the newly Recommended sugar beet variety from Hilleshog – is well adapted to being in the ground for up to 12 months. With the lowest bolting figures of any variety on the 2009 NIAB Recommended List, this new high-yielding heavyweight could be sown on March 1st in one year and harvested as late as the following March 1st. Tempest is extremely vigorous and has the largest tops of any conventional variety, thus providing good early ground cover at the beginning of the season and a greater degree of frost protection at the end of the season.
Yet to be named, the double tolerant variety (HI 0551) – scheduled for Recommendation and initial supply in 2010 - is a conventional variety which is tolerant to both rhizomania and beet cyst nematode. Hilleshog have already had the variety in limited field-scale trials in the U.K. for two years on infected land and it has demonstrated good levels of tolerance to both pest and disease. Yields have been good, bucking the 'yield drag' usually associated with disease tolerant varieties.
