12th September 2022

Innovative plant genetics tackle production costs

“We know that today’s growers are looking for varieties that are not costly to grow, or that offer this combined with the opportunity to earn a premium, and at this year’s Cereals event we are in the exciting position to be able to showcase a range of new varieties of winter wheat and oilseed rape, as well as spring barley’s,” says Les Daubney, marketing director for arable seeds with Limagrain UK.

“Alongside these, there will be demonstration plots of many of the more familiar and established varieties from the Limagrain breeding programme, such as Evolution, Crusoe and Revelation that led the way in offering higher consistent yields with better disease resistance ratings, and continue to hold a dominant market share based on this.”

 LG Sundance and LG Motown are very high yielding soft feed winter wheats, with initial official testing suggesting that the varieties meet the specifications for both the distilling and soft uks export markets.

 “We are particularly excited about LG Motown, which has consistently yielded 104.3 over control, and above JB Diego, and offers similar attributes to the popular variety Revelation, with some significant advantages. It’s earlier to mature than Revelation and market stalwart, JB Diego, an important attribute of consideration for growers of winter wheat in the northern regions of the UK,” says Mr Daubney.

He adds that LG Motown has good resistance to the rusts, Septoria and eyespot as well as offering OWBM resistance.

 LG Sundance has an excellent disease resistance profile, with a very good ‘7’ rating for the yield robbing disease Septoria tritici; an attribute considered of great importance in many regions of the UK.

 Quality wheat newcomer, LG Cassidy is a very high yielding winter wheat, with initial official testing suggesting that the variety meets the specifications for the nabim group 2 sector. LG Cassidy is a shorter strawed variety with good lodging resistance, a durable disease resistance and good physical grain characteristics.

 Stratosphere is a very high yielding soft feed winter wheat, bred by Sejet. Initial official testing suggests that the variety meets the specifications for the soft uks export market. Stratosphere has a good disease resistance profile and carries resistance for OWBM.

“Our unique, UK-focussed oilseed rape breeding programme, is starting to produce varieties with attributes that are specifically of value to UK growers,” says Limagrains’s senior oilseed rape breeder, Vasilis Gegas.

Archimedes offers growers a clubroot resistant variety with additional superior agronomic traits over comparable varieties within this same sector; the variety has good early plant vigour combined with good autumn development,  it is earlier flowering and is early maturing, combined with pod shattering resistance, as well as offering a very good disease resistance profile with a 6 for Light Leaf Spot and an impressive 8 for Stem Canker (Rlm7 resistance) making it an attractive proposition for growing on infected land the E/W, as well as in the traditional clubroot areas of Scotland

Mr Gegas adds that Archimedes is comparable for yield with the control varieties PR46W21 and the clubroot resistant variety Mentor.

Artic is an ‘exciting’ conventional, open pollinated variety with good gross output potential for both the E/W and North regions of the UK, combined with very good lodging and excellent disease resistance as well as a high oil content.”

Aquila is an ‘exciting’ restored hybrid variety with good gross output potential for the E/W region of the UK, combined with good lodging and excellent disease resistance as well as a high oil content.

For the first time, Limagrain is bringing a ‘triple’ use spring malting barley to the market. “LG Opera is under test by the IBD for brewing and both the malt and grain distilling categories; an interesting prospect for the future for both grower and end users,” says senior barley breeder, Mark Glew.

LG Opera has shown consistently high yield potential over seasons and regions, in both treated and untreated NL trials. It offers comparable or better yield potential against the market leaders in all three IBD malting sectors.

LG Okapi is a new, high yielding, non GN spring malting barley that has very good agronomic characteristics combined with a good disease resistance profile and good grain attributes. LG Okapi has shown high yield potential in both treated and untreated trials and has also shown an 11% treated yield advantage over Belgravia; the comparable variety for malt and grain distilling on the AHDB Recommended list.

During the two days of the Cereals event, growers are welcomed to the Limagrain stand ( 1116) to discuss these and any of its varieties over a pie and Tundra bean beer, with senior plant breeders and technical experts.

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