Varieties Galore in Cereals Crop Plots

The crop plots at the Cereals Event will be the best place to see UK varieties first-hand on Robert Law’s farm near Royston, Cambridgeshire on the 9th and 10th June 2010.

Breeding for end markets, disease resistance and specific traits has moved forward tremendously over recent years. The demonstrations at Cereals will show just how far.

HGCA will have an incredible 135 varieties growing on their stand; 41 winter OSR, 40 winter wheat, 22 winter barley, 11 winter oat varieties and 21 spring barley. Jim McVittie or Bill Handley will be your guide if you want to join one of the HGCA’s hugely popular guided crop plot tours, there will also be a representative from the UK milling industry describing what the end market wants from a variety as well as Dr James Brosnan of the Scotch Whisky Research Institute, who will explain what the requirements are for distilling. There will be six or seven tours each day, lasting 30-45 minutes each.
Closer to market, RAGT will be profiling Warrior, Hereward and Battalion as well as their variety pipeline and new candidate wheat distilling variety Tuxedo. “Like Warrior, Tuxedo has a high Septoria tritici resistance rating together with both high and broad yellow rust resistance,” points out RAGT Seeds agronomist, Dr Cathy Hooper.

RAGT plots will also include the varieties Shire, Moonshine and Cromwell (spring barley). “Plus we have four smaller plots of NL candidates, as well as a display of Ixxes maize and Bizzon oilseed rape,” Ms Hooper adds.

KWS UK will be profiling their highest yielding Group 2 breadmaker, KWS Sterling with master baker John Hayes baking bread from the new variety which is now available as part of a new buy-back initiative with miller ADM and Gleadells. Cereals will also be the first opportunity to see pipeline wheats KWS Santiago and KWS Podium, the only milling wheat up for Recommendation this year.

Senova’s Just Oats stand will be focusing on the new oat Link project Quoats (www.quoats.org) which is focused on research for the ruminant sector, where oats have been shown to have a marked effect in reducing methane, an increasingly important subject. Senova will also be highlighting the group 4 JB Diego, the Group 3 OWBM resistant wheat, Scout and the Group 4 soft wheat Beluga rated for its high alcohol yields. The new OSR variety Fashion will also be profiled, suggested by Senova to be “the first true UK conventional variety for some years.” 

For barley growers, KWS Cassia which is from the same breeding programme as Saffron will also be growing on site as will the new top-performing sugar beet variety Rosalinda KWS.  At the same time, market-leading beet cyst nematode variety, Annouschka KWS will also be demonstrated, with experts on hand to advise how best to deal with the pest.

On Monsanto’s stand two new oilseed rape varieties will be launched. The first, DK ExPower, is already showing its strength in UK national List testing. The company says that extensive trials across the UK, Germany, Denmark and Sweden yield advantages over its stable-mate, Excalibur, whilst delivering autumn vigour and manageable height. Alongside the mainstream variety comes DK Sequoia, the first low biomass hybrid. Monsanto says that two years of official testing puts the variety’s gross output at around the Excalibur level.
Nickerson will have 52 variety demonstration plots, including 14 new varieties never previously seen at Cereals. The company says that it will also be profiling the investment that it is making into plant breeding and how this is contributing to the progress of UK agriculture.

Syngenta Seeds will be launching their winter malting barley varieties Winsome and Purdey, plus the new nabim Group 2 winter wheat variety, Kingdom. The team on the stand will also profile the genetic battle against the threat of Beet Cyst Nematode (BCN), for which there is now no permitted chemical control; they suggest the issue is hotting-up and that plant breeders appear to be winning against an old enemy with varieties like their newly recommended, Sentinel, which not only tolerates BCN and Rhizomania but has virtually no yield penalty on uninfected sites.

Pioneer will be profiling Maximus, the company’s semi-dwarf rapeseed hybrids which they say “offers unique and simplified crop management advantages from planting to harvest.”

Attendees will earn two NRoSO CPD or four BASIS points for attending either day of Cereals.  Tickets can be purchased in advance via the website.  Adult tickets are £15 in advance and £20.00 on the day. Student concessions are also available. The Cereals website at www.cerealsevent.co.uk has information about exhibitors, what to see and how to get there.

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Notes to Editors
The Cereals Event
• The Cereals Event is the leading technical event for the UK arable industry with over 64ha of stands and live demonstrations including Crop Plots, Working Demonstrations, the Sprays & Sprayers arena and Renewables, an area specially dedicated to renewable energy, biofuel and non-food crops.
• Over 400 leading suppliers are already preparing to keep visitors up-to-date with the very latest products, advice and information; offering a complete one-stop service from seeds to sprayers, crop varieties to cultivation equipment, fertiliser to finance.
• Cereals brings together over 26,500 professional farmers and industry experts over two days. For more details go to www.cerealsevent.co.uk
• The Cereals event is organised and presented by Haymarket Exhibitions Ltd.
• Farmers Weekly and Crops are the media partners for Cereals.
Tickets will be priced as follows and can be booked online at the Cereals Event website www.cerealsevent.co.uk
Advance Adult (available online until 3th June 5pm)      £15
Adult (on the gate)  £20
Advance Student (available online until 3th June 5pm)   £12
Student (on the gate) £17

HSBC Agriculture
HSBC Agriculture is Principal Sponsor of the Cereals Event.  HSBC Agriculture provides a specialist service to agriculture and agribusiness customers throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland with a team of over 50 dedicated managers that concentrate exclusively on the needs of farmers and growers. www.hsbc.co.uk/agriculture