AF Seed Procurement Manager Paige Waters spent several busy days at various trials tours. Here are her highlights including upcoming new varieties and how existing varieties are holding up.

LG Seeds: an interesting discussion around their new variety LG Redwald, with the possibility of a reduced seed rate by 20%. As well as thoughts on candidate varieties for 2024 planting from OSR Product Manager Liam Wilkinson.

Agrii & Samco open evening: John Miles (Seed Technical Manager, Agrii) gave a good overview of their varieties on the Recommended List.

Morley Farms NIAB Innovation day: a fantastic opportunity to catch up with Members, independent agronomists and industry experts. The main topic was options for this year’s autumn variety choices.

Elsoms Seeds: a good tour around their trials site covering barley, rye, triticale, oats and wheat. We also saw their trials on vernalisation for different varieties. Blackstone was shown to be a promising variety for later drilling.

Upcoming seed options

This autumn, wheat growers’ focus looks likely to be on Crusoe, Extase, Dawsum, Champion and LG Typhoon based on high market shares, yield and disease packages.

For 2024, keep an eye out for exciting candidates Bamford, LG Beowolf and SY Cheer. All look set to be approved, but none commercially available this year.

Putting diversification into practice

Crown Point Estate: their AHDB Monitor Farm launch and farm walk. A really interesting overview of their cropping, agronomy and soils. In addition to more traditional crops, they also grow 11 ha mint for Colmans, which gets re-planted every 15-18 years. In addition, there’s a range of diversifications on the estate. For example using old cattle sheds that are rented out for offices and growing pumpkins & sunflowers to engage with the public. The take home message from this visit? Anything is possible.

Paige Waters Seed Procurement Manager

paige.waters@af.farm   01603 881 830