Speak to many westcountry farmers and the opinion is the same, we have never seen a 'summer' like this one, in fact the whole year has been pretty much up the spout with no let up in difficult conditions.
With harvest struggling on and the results looking far from brilliant so far, it is great to hear a success story, well success in part anyway. A while ago I put a short clip up on youtube where our Sales Director Alastair Moore and I were looking at the ins and outs of establishing Oilseed rape, the link to the clip is down below. Our Rape breeder has been saying for years that canopy management, establishment and nitrogen influence final yields much more so than the individual variety that are ranked on the HGCA 'descriptive' list (I call it descriptive, because some of the LSD numbers are so far out so as to make the results statistically null and void). We get shoehorned into chosing varieties according to their results on this list, which incidently through the way the data is gathered is automatically selecting for taller and later maturing varieties, not ideal given the conditions this year!
Last summer a variety called Artoga, bred by Limagrain, started to raise it's profile because it was doing stunningly well in large parts of Europe and was one of only a few varieties that proved it could survive bitterly cold conditions and produce a crop that doesn't readily shatter at harvest time. I persuaded a few of my customers to try it and lo and behold it does what it says on the can! One of my customers on really wet heavy and very marginal soils on the cornish border put some in with a Sumo, very late (late September) and although we had a mild autumn, the fact we had so much rain drowned quite a bit of it where water pooled and sat from November through till March. However, on the one field that is south facing and reasonably well drained it was stonkingly good. Considering as well that it didn't have an autumn herbicide, that it only had one fungicide spray during it whole lifetime, to end up with an average yield well over 1ton/ac is encouraging, given that some crops that have had everything thrown at them are only doing 1.5t/ac. To appreciate how much abuse it had, it was dessicated and then left a good 3 weeks enduring torrential rain and thunderstorms, with long spells and damp mizzle thrown in as well, followed by bursts of very steamy hot weather before the combine managed to get to it last weekend (11th August). The grower fearing the worst gingerly started cutting thinking that most of the seed would have dropped out, or worse would start shedding from the vibration of the cutter bar on the combine. I am happy to report his worries were unfounded; no lodging, no cutterbar losses, no shedding!
Elsewhere we are seeing yields consinstently in the 1.55-1.8t/ac range down here, which given the conditions and the season is quite encouraging and certainly on a par or exceeding the yields of the high ranking varieties on the HGCA list.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsNHjSykIwM&list=UUCuUvslFtDuEj6bQPEOHIxA&index=4&feature=plcp
