Wheat varieties in a bearish market......Choices for 2014/15 season.

With winter barley yields proving to be consistent and high this season, questions about the cost of wheat production this season are rearing themselves daily. With on farm prices off the combine being touted at less than £120/ton, some serious head scratching is taking place in the south west as to what to plant this coming season.

What has been noticeable this season is the wet weather. Right from the outset, October through to May was wet and very mild, record storm surges, high winds, day after day with only a few days respite between storms to get the late planted crops in (after maize, potatoes). The early drilled fields got a flying start and where possible had to have a few sprays of insecticide to keep the aphids off. Seed dressed with Deter had enough protection early on, but this soon faded with the weather onslaught.

With wet mild weather, early ingress of disease was inevitable with Septoria levels in the early new year being high, along with a lot of yellow rust in susceptible varieties. With the ground being so wet and soils relatively warm, plants continued to produce biomass, but not much root as the soils were waterlogged. This continued all the way up till May when the rain abated and temperatures climbed. This was ideal conditions for maize establishment, but some wheats with small root systems started to show signs of strain.

The very mild and wet winter has had another significant effect on winter barley and wheat, namely Take-All. In Lattitude seed treated crops, drilled in early October, there still has been crop damage, that drilled in late September is worse, particularly in fields that weren't rolled post drilling. I have seen Take-All effects in winter barley as bad as in wheat, even barley drilled late October down in Cornwall. In some wheat crops that were drilled as second wheats early (late September) through into the middle of October, it is possible to see which are the early drilled and those that went in last, purely by the degree of Take-All infection in the fields. In other instances, over-yeared seed from 2012 that only had single purpose dressing, was planted in fields following spring barley, purely due to the results of cropping rotation mayhem in 2012, with disastrous results being seen now. I have seen instances of Take-All symptoms in winter barley following winter oats following wheat too, some a complete right-off.

This year, the two cereal demonstration sites were drilled at quite different times, the site at Bude went in early, 25th September, into ideal seedbed conditions. Some varieties have two plots looking at over-yeared seed, a product of the very wet autumn of 2012 when a lot of seed never got planted. Given the issues of 2012, it is hardly surprising that farmers were keen to get the winter crops in early in 2013 to avoid the same issues again. The Tregony site however was opposite, originally planned to go in October, weeks went by with conditions hopeless, until a little window opened the last week of November that allowed the plots to be sown 2nd December. The mild weather definitely helped this lot survive, although some varieties were really up against it and those plots looked appallingly thin. This field was sprayed with Multimax at the earliest opportunity (phosphite and potash foliar feed) to stimulate root and shoot development, which had the desired effect and thickened the plots up well.

Tregony demonstration site mid July.

Bude demonstration site 23rd May with untreated area showing yellow rust in susceptible varieties.

Winter Barley plots at Tregony, Matros in foreground, then Harlequin, Cadillac, California. Matros in rest of field. This field followed winter wheat and suffered some Take-All effects.

In the previous years (2012 and 2013) Avatar winter wheat has been the top yielding variety at both sites, in early and late drilling slots, wet year and dry year. A son of Istabraq and the top perfuming variety in Ireland and Scotland, it has proved itself as a big yielder in this maritime climate of the south west. A variety that was half a percentage point off going on the HGCA recommended list in 2012, it is a very reliable and farmer friendly variety. In trials at Exeter going back to 2008, it has always been in the top 5 in terms of outright performance and across a wide range of sites in the HGCA trials system it performed well. It was the variety that caught my eye back in 2009 at Exeter, I started including it in farm trials in 2010 and it has proven a very consistent and forgiving variety. planted early, it doesn't get too proud and full of disease like Istabraq can (thats why its always advised to plant Istabraq late down here, possibly the best wheat variety after maize), planted late (end of February, it has amazing tillering capacity and a fantastic yield potential. I have a case of it being planted the 19th of March this year and it has flowered and produced a great crop. That is nearly as forgiving as Claire! Due to it's high tillering capacity, it lends itself to the Claydon system of minimum tillage, as can be seen below.

Avatar drilled in November with a Claydon drill, near Crediton.

Avatar in a field thats been continuous wheat for 30 years, looking fabulous. Drilled at 230 seeds/sqm in late mid September 2013.

Avatar produces a good bright sample with a high specific weight.

Since starting this we have now harvested about 400acs of wheats, predominantly Istabraq and Avatar. Yields for Istabraq are in the 3.75t/ac range with a good specific weight, with Avatar in second wheat/continuos wheat slots doing the same and between 3.8 and 4.25t/ac in the 1st wheat slots, again with very good specific weights. There are are a few results that I am waiting on from the Crediton and Truro areas, but at the minute yields are promising for a difficult year.

I am hoping we will have the trial plots harvested in the near future which will then give us an indication of where the new varieties like Zulu, Panacea, Evolution and Revelation sit in the mix. Revelation does look promising at the minute, Panacea may surprise with its yield too.

More to follow soon.

Playing Russian Roulette

For a fortunate few, Harvest 2012 is drawing to a protracted and very difficult close, certainly this is a year that we aren't going to forget in a hurry!

It has been a revelation this year, a 'shake out' year as one of our breeders described it, as some serious issues that potentially threaten wheat breeding program's are starting to emerge with some very serious consequences for UK farming.

In the past some breeding program's have focused on genetic resistance to regular disease pressures, septoria tritici being the main one, with other traits being bolted on. Some other breeders have been focusing on all out yield, regardless of how genetically strong these varieties were, their consensus being that disease risk could be managed by chemistry tailored to curb disease outbreaks. Barn filling varieties with poor to average disease traits proliferated as farmers bought into the idea that chemistry could solve all disease problems. As with anything in nature, disease pressures and mutations give rise to new challenges. Single gene resistance to disease instead of dual, or multiple gene resistance is easier to breed into new varieties and allows quick turn around from lab to field. As a consequence we are now seeing multiple incidences of varieties succumbing  to Yellow Rust and Brown Rust strains that are evolving, varieties that have only just been registered on the HGCA recommended lists, with the resultant increase in usage of full blown ag-chem programs to try and control these issues.

Throw into this mix one of the wettest growing seasons, especially from pre flowering all the way to harvest with low solar energy levels, high humidity and very damp soil conditions and you have a perfect storm scenario for a whole host of new diseases to make their presence felt too, especially Fusarium which has quite literally sucked all yield out of wheats this year, apart from those like Istabraq that has not suffered as much and is still producing a reasonable sample.

A common theme I am hearing on farm is a new level of questioning with regard to ag-chem inputs, how expensive this last season has been to get a crop that basically isn't near covering costs. It's is interesting to note how some of these chemistry suppliers have gone from small scale operations to giants in the industry in a very short period of time, considering how long the 'green revolution' in agriculture has been going on for. In a very short time span, farmers have seen their supply base of agricultural chemicals diminish considerably down to just a handful of players in the market, with the agronomy angle reduced even further and geared almost exclusively to structured spray programs. In a wet year like this last one, total reliance on sprays to control disease has been severely tested and the basic fundamentals of genetic resistance and a variety's ability to cope under stress have been fully on display. Some have coped and a lot have not.

Soil science, I would say is one of the most important factors governing yield, has been largely forgotten, farmers have devolved responsibility in many areas to their ag-chem supplier and crop walkers who supposedly are more knowledgeable in maximising yields and thus returns on their behalf. The knowledge gap on farm has been further diminished as a result of squeezed margins in the 'naughties' that lead to farmers farming more acres with less personnel and thus being more time restricted to chase knowledge in this regard. Universities and Agricultural Colleges too reduced the soil science input and concentrated more on the chemistry and machinery aspects of tillage, horsepower and technology as soil science generally was considered boring by most students. How many modern day farmers really understand and know what is going on in their soils?

A common theme I hear on farm is this; "why is it that with all your new fancy varieties you are breeding I am still only getting the yields we were getting 10 years ago"? Well, this time I heard an answer that came from a soil specialist company that has been growing a database on soils across the UK for the last 10 plus years and what he said was scary. The basis of it is this, pure arable farmers have been depleting the soil organic matter for so long with simple cereal and rape rotations that in some areas these levels are so low as to be irreplaceable, the soils have had all the life sucked out of them and as a result they physically are unable to provide the growing crops with the nutrients to attain their genetic potential.

It really has been noticeable in fields this year, those with good organic matter, good structure, good nutrient status have still delivered a reasonable yield and machinery has still been able to travel at critical times without leaving 3ft deep ruts. A farmer I know in Wiltshire has been chopping his straw for 10 years now, been applying copious amounts of compost and maintaining his lime and nutrient status with almost religious zeal. On very heavy clay over chalk, he has managed to keep going during harvest when his neighbours were getting stuck, his fields have a natural 'sponginess' to them as you walk them with very few areas of standing water in any of them, whilst neighbours have had 6" across whole fields of standing water for long periods of time. When you look where the combine has been traveling, there are no deep ruts, look over the hedge and it looks like a battlefield.

The genetic potential of some of the older wheat varieties like Einstein is well in excess of 25t/ha, we know from data attained in New Zealand these varieties are currently doing 18t/ha on farm in places consistently where the fertility of the soils has been maintained and the soils well managed in terms of rotation, organic manure levels, trace element replacement and most importantly, soil structure. These farmers have good rotations with break crops designed to replace organic matter and recharge the soil nutrient levels, instead of relying on stuff out of a bag. UK farmers in the main have not been doing this and yield increases have largely flatlined.

We need a radicle rethink in how we manage crop rotations, increase soil organic matter levels, improve soil structure and rejuvinate trace element levels. We need to sometimes stop and think; the soils we are farming are the product of millions of years in the making, yet with our modern cropping methods we are depleting their ability to produce the very food that our growing populations will need in the future.

How are the future generations of young farmers going to produce a decent crop that provides an economic return if the very medium needed to grow it is barren? Those who think GM will gallantly ride to the rescue are sadly going to be disappointed because the focus in GM at present is geared towards mainly chemistry, rather than soils.

The last 5 years have in the main been benign to cereal varieties, yes there has been pressure from disease, but the weaker ones were still able to deliver a credible yield with a lot of ag-chem help. This year we hit chamber six and it has blown a huge hole in many a bottom line  Lets hope this year the HGCA clamps down on low disease threshold varieties whose presence on the list now is very questionable and we move away from 'spray and weigh' varieties.

Nickerson Wheat variety trials 2009

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.