Wheat yields down and quality compromised – but no complaints

Good blackgrass control over recent years, helped by extended rotations and a wider range of crops, paid dividends last autumn at Heathcote Farms’ Herne Manor Farm in Bedfordshire.

“Blackgrass levels are now low enough to allow us to drill earlier, and the dirtiest fields happened to be earmarked for break crops last season, which helped further,” says arable manager Matt Fuller.

“2023 was our wettest year, based on 44 years of data, and a lot of that fell in the last quarter. But we were able to drill all our autumn crops by 10 October, ahead of the bulk of the rain, which put us in a decent position.

“Crops had emerged and started establishing in good time – it would have been a very different picture if we’d had to wait. A lot of people were hit really hard through no fault of their own – we were very lucky.”

The first 40ha of Group 1 milling wheat RGT Illustrious was drilled on 1 October and 60ha a week later. A similar area of Crusoe was sown in the same period. Group 2 Palladium was drilled earlier, and Extase as a second wheat at the end.

“We sowed RGT Illustrious at 400 seeds/sq m as it is a shy tillerer, and aimed for 350-375 with other varieties to reduce disease and lodging risk. We would have put an extra 25 seeds on across all varieties had we known what was coming.”

Early spring agronomy was compromised as the farm’s heavy soils remained at field capacity. “We normally apply some nitrogen at the end of February to give everything a kickstart, but we were probably a good 10 days behind,” says Matt.

“We applied one or two phosphite feeds to encourage better rooting, but our tiller numbers ended up 10-15% down on normal, which was reflected in ear counts and the final yields.”

Fungicide spend was higher. “We knew crops didn’t have their usual potential, but had we taken our foot off the pedal in terms of controlling disease, it could have been even worse.

“We had to spend quite robustly, tweaking products and rates according to disease and spray intervals, some of which were compromised.”

Overall yields were 10-15% down across the board. RGT Illustrious and Crusoe averaged around 9.5t/ha, about a tonne adrift of Palladium and similar to Extase grown as a second wheat.

“We always expect Group 2s to yield more than Group 1s, and that was the case,” says Matt. “We had a mixed bag with proteins. Illustrious made 11.5-12%, so hopefully we can still get a bit of a premium for it. But Palladium struggled for the third year, so we have decided to drop it.”

Crusoe delivered enough protein but half the area was hit hard by brown rust. As a result, the variety is being pared back to 30ha this coming season.

“We are making room for some newer varieties so we can review their performance on a larger scale,” says Matt. The farm already runs tramline width variety trials to assess potential.

RGT Illustrious, which remains a relatively clean variety, will account for 50ha. Matt hopes it will return to form in what, with luck, will be a more normal season.

He is also trying a small area of RGT Goldfinch, a potential breadmaker that resists barley yellow dwarf virus and orange wheat blossom midge and has excellent disease resistance scores.

“It’s not the highest yielder, but I can see its potential value, particularly in higher risk areas and for early drilled crops. BYDV resistance would give us one less thing to worry about.

“It’s quite possible, as we saw this season, that you can’t get back on to spray wheat for weeks in the autumn, leaving crops exposed.

“I think the wet weather reduced aphid numbers, but we still saw BYDV about in the late spring. So a variety like this definitely has potential – the genetics are in place.”