Cereals

Bury St Edmunds MP Jo Churchill, visited Limagrain UK to see how plant breeding is helping UK farmers to be more sustainable.

Dr Cathy Hooper, RAGT Seeds technical sales manager, reviews the late Septoria tritici epidemic that hit many wheat crops this season.

Feed barley yields with a good premium from difficult ground ill-suited to traditional malting production for an input cost of less than £65/tonne. The Budweiser barley-growing maths certainly adds up for farm manager, Chris Singer and his team at the Carington Estate in Buckinghamshire.

This year’s Midlands Machinery Show will not only feature the latest heavy machinery, but also let farmers see first hand the latest technology improving harvest returns.

D.G Hopper Agricultural Contractors spoke to Farmers Guide, to let us know how harvest is progressing for them so far.

Catchy weather conditions mean farmers are having to roll out the combines at every available opportunity in order to bring in this year’s winter wheat harvest, while winter barley and OSR are almost complete.

It’s easy to be captivated by the rush of combines and trailers but a strong post-harvest plan can make or break a successful harvest.

Saving your own seed offers valuable extra flexibility and control as well as useful cost savings. But it must be done in a well-planned and managed way if this is not to be at the expense of crop performance.

With both an award-winning winter barley and a high-quality soft Group 4 winter wheat suitable for distilling, Senova’s new additions to the AHDB RL for 2021/22 look rather promising.

Wheat production in Britain for 2021-2022 has been forecast to reach 14.92m tonnes, according to an estimate by the AHDB.

Heather Briggs spoke to Prof Kim Hammond-Kosack of Rothamsted Research and Dr Simon Griffiths from the John Innes Centre who are leading Defra-funded research on wheat genetics as part of a collaboration between plant scientists and commercial breeders.

With new crop wheat trading at a healthy £160 to £170 per tonne, second wheats are looking an attractive prospect for 2021/22 cropping plans.