Milling wheat shining light for Oxfordshire farmer
Harvest Stories: Adrian Taylor
RAGT milling wheat varieties have produced positive results in a difficult season for Oxfordshire grower Adrian Taylor.
Some of the wheat crops were predictably not very high-yielding, with a 3000t wheat store two bays short of being filled, he says. “Usually we would expect to fill this store plus more in another store, but it’s not to be this year.”
RAGT’s milling wheats RGT Skyfall and RGT Illustrious were an exception to the lower performance, yielding 8.9t/ha across 120ha and 8.8t/ha from 40ha, respectively. Drilled in mid-October on some of Adrian’s deeper clay loams, they were close to the farm’s average yield over the past three seasons, although 10t/ha crops have been known on the farm in seasons before that.
“We caught a couple of 10mm showers, including one just after we put on ammonium nitrate to boost grain proteins around flag leaf, which came at opportune times.”
That, combined with a soil type that retains moisture for longer and good levels of sunshine, contributed to the decent yields. On lighter land, wheat yields were as low as 6t/ha from other varieties, Adrian notes.
Quality was good, with both Skyfall and Illustrious reaching the 12.5% grain protein level required for his Warburtons milling wheat contract.
Specific weights averaged around 80kg/hl on the Skyfall, with Illustrious around 77kg/hl, Adrian adds.
Late drilled oilseed rape is proving to be a successful strategy for the farm, with RGT Blackmoon showing excellent resilience in its first year on the farm.
After a two-year break from growing the crop due to failures caused by cabbage stem flea beetle, Adrian turned to drilling in September as a way of avoiding the peak adult flea beetle migration.
“Since we’ve started growing oilseed rape again, we haven’t lost any crops, so it seems to be paying off.”
Another change this season was growing hybrid varieties. “We’d been growing home-saved conventional varieties, but after reading a couple of articles about RGT Blackmoon, I decided to give it a go, and the seed was reasonably priced compared with other hybrids.”
RAGT’s claim that the variety’s impressive speed of development and autumn vigour make it the number one choice for sowing in adverse conditions was put to the test by Adrian, with the crop drilled on 12 September at 3.1kg/ha plus 100kg/ha of DAP starter fertiliser.
“I was chuffed to bits with it,” Adrian says. “It survived some really wet periods with water lying on the ground over winter. I couldn’t believe it.”
Not only did it survive, but it was the top-yielding variety on the farm, matching Limagrain’s conventional variety Acacia. “The best field did 4.2t/ha, so we’re going to grow more in the coming season.”
In total, he grows around 120ha of oilseed rape, with around half likely to be RGT Blackmoon in the coming season, he says.
