The 2021 harvest was a positive result as far as yield is concerned but not as impressive when we compare them to the highs of 2020.
Many growers commented that yields were back, but 2020 was an out-of-this-world season weather-wise, which will be hard to replicate again, and 2021 was still a good-to-above average result.
Quality was excellent, and an early harvest got most farmers moving as far as replanting and planning for next season.
For us, Kerrin still did exceptionally well with positive results in yield and quality. In many trials over the country, it was always on-par with the best of the other varieties on the market, which we are proud of. We are confident Kerrin will deliver great results across a wide range of growing conditions and locations.
As a lot of you will be aware, there are currently some challenges in the milling wheat space. However, Zyatt still is a great fit to be marketed as a milling or feed wheat. This option may be one of Zyatt’s major strengths to allow farmers to have a variety that can meet multiple end-use options.
Orwell winter barley also had some great results with happy growers, which reflected in an above-average area planted in autumn 2021; very positive for the future of winter barley.
Our own trials in the 2021 harvest have supplied some interesting outcomes, with several feed and biscuit types looking promising as far as new material to show to the market over the next few seasons. This included milling lines with specific advantages, which will continue to put us up against most in the market.
As far as spring, we will be pushing out Cochise, our spring milling / feed wheat option. This is a large market, so we are confident Cochise has an exciting future, giving growers another option in the spring wheat department. In its first year in CPT2, Cochise was the highest-yielding variety by 5% across all sites.
I have had many favourable comments about Irina spring barley, which is another product we will have available again to compete with any other spring barley.
Breun is one of our major breeders from Germany, and we did a lot of evaluations for them, along with drone videos, as their breeders were unable to get out due to COVID-19 restrictions. They have 4520 plots at SST Irwell, so evaluating them was an interesting job and contributed to us getting closer within our partners breeding programme.
Overall, things are positive in the cereals world; grain is still the most prominent area sown in the arable market with favourable pricing at present and looking forward, it has a significant place in farm income.
Phil Smith
Seed Cereal Product Manager
