Published by Farmers Guide, July 2008.

Nickerson Senior Plant Breeder Bill Angus (left) and Arable
Marketing Manager Lee Robinson examining the company's
new variety Cassius on trial plots near Woolpit, Suffolk.

Best-ever breeding year for
Nickerson wheat varieties

PLANT breeder Nickerson has surpassed all expectations by getting a record number of candidate wheat varieties into trials for next year's HGCA Recommended List (RL).
Speaking at the company's wheat breeding centre, at Woolpit, Suffolk, Arable Marketing Manager Lee Robinson said it had six new winter wheat varieties and one spring wheat in RL trials this year.
"We believe this is a record and promises growers and end users a welcome and widened choice for 2009 onwards," he said.
Nickerson is so confident of the potential of the new varieties that two will have limited seed stocks available for sowing this year.
"We have already announced the release of Panorama, a potential bread-making winter wheat with the highest untreated and treated yield of all this year's candidate bread-making varieties, and of Cassius, a potential new Group 3 variety that has a good agronomic profile and is potentially suitable for early sowing in the autumn," Mr Robinson said. "There should be enough Cassius seed available to meet about 1% of the winter wheat market, while stocks of Panorama will be a bit less than that."
Nickerson has two other bread-making wheats in the RL trials alongside Panorama. QPlus, a potential Group 1 bread-making wheat, is considered to be an ideal partner for leading Group 1 variety Solstice, with the added benefit of resistance to orange wheat blossom midge, while Walpole has a very high yield potential and is similar to Xi19 in agronomic type.
Two Group 4 feed varieties complete the six winter wheat varieties in this year's RL trials. Lear is a soft milling wheat with a range of end use markets and a unique combination of characteristics to counter Septoria and orange wheat blossom midge. Bantam, meanwhile, is targeted at the hard milling wheat market and is potentially suited to early sowing.
The sole new spring wheat in the trials is Buckingham, which Mr Robinson feels has bread-making potential.

Good news
Nickerson Senior Plant Breeder Bill Angus said that the company's latest varieties with resistance to wheat orange blossom midge were a good news story that deserved to get wider coverage.
"QPlus has in-built resistance that means no insecticide is needed to tackle infestation," Mr Angus said. "The plant kills the midge itself.
"I'm not against using chemical treatments, but I'd have to say that I would prefer wheat not to have organophosphates sprayed on it."
A cross between Solstice and Robigus, Mr Angus added that QPlus had potential to be a Group 1 bread-making variety, although it had been held back by poor weather last year and had not yet reached its full potential.
Turning to the new varieties that Nickerson will have available this year, Mr Angus said that Panorama was cross between Solstice and Xi19 that had been crossed again with Solstice.
"It's a solid Group 2 variety with stiff straw, very high potential yield and an excellent disease profile," he said. "I wouldn't advocate Panorama for early drilling, but once established it looks and behaves like Solstice."
Cassius, meanwhile, was a Group 3 variety that brought some genetic diversity to the RL trials.
"It's not a Robigus derivative, so it has a completely different genetic base from many of today's wheat varieties," Mr Angus said. "This promotes the balance of genetic diversity that we need.
"A cross between Alchemy and Wizard, Cassius has stiff straw, an excellent disease profile and very high yield potential. It also has potential for early drilling and could well turn out to be a good second wheat."
A new Nickerson variety that growers should look out for in next year's RL was Bantam.
"It's the dark horse for 2009," Mr Angus said. "It has good flowering biology that means it has performed well in the past two years which offered very different growing conditions.
"A hard milling variety from a cross between Biscay and Xi19, it has stiff straw, very high potential yield and potential for early sowing."

Excellent crops
Mr Angus said that 2008 had produced some of the best wheat crops in the ground that he had ever seen. The only problems, he suggested, were where min-till cultivations had not been carried out correctly.
"However, we need high sunshine levels in the next few weeks to complete the flowering process and turn it into an outstanding crop.
"2007 was poor, what we need this year is a normal English summer with temperatures about 22 or 23 degrees Celsius," he added.
"I'd go as far as saying some crops look amazing, and I'd recommend applying nitrogen. Even with prices where they are, it's a one-way, cast-iron bet.
"Brown rust is not a big issue this year and is only likely to be seen on particularly susceptible varieties, but Septoria tritici could be a risk and must be controlled. It has the potential to cripple yield, so vulnerable varieties should be treated with full-rate applications of fungicide. Applying less will control the problem, but will have no persistence."
Resistance to Septoria tricici should be a major objective for growers when selecting varieties, as should consistency of yield across a number of years.
"Farmers should avoid varieties that have a large variance in yield in different years," Mr Angus said. "They should be making the most of the Recommended List to make their decisions, reading it in the bath and really digesting it."