Something that is so important to growers, yet is often overlooked in chosing a variety to grow on your farm is disease profile. So often I come across farmers who are chosing varieties purely on outright yield off the NIAB list and not looking at what it is going to cost in spraying and agronomy inputs to produce this yield. Look on this chart produced by Masstock who co-run this trials site in Devon with Nickersons and the interesting feature to note is that most varieties in the green zone (ie being more resistant to Septoria tritici ) are Nickerson varieties! This is so important when it comes to timing of sprays, especially in the west where disease pressures are higher anyway and the rain can delay critical spray applications by a week ,or more early in the spring, leading to a loss in yield, or worse, lower specific weights at harvest. It was illuminating talking to a contractor near Crediton who is growing, Sahara, Except, Istabraq, Gatsby and Einstein who after testing reckoned his average specific weights were all over 80!Nickersons' breeding team are and have for a number of years have been breeding clean ripening varieties with disease resistance. What has been interesting to see this year is that some of the 'older' Nickerson varieties which have been down graded by some experts as 'past it', this year outperformed the so-called all-dancing-all-singing newer varieties of some other seed houses. Claire (10 years on the list) this year performed extremely well in large parts of the country, and Istabraq is still a fantastic late sown variety, particularly after maize. The photo's below show the stay-green-and-clean aspects of some of Nickersons' varieties compared to others.
A variety to watch out for is Invicta, shows really good yield potential along with strong disease profiles.
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