15/05/2013
TWO 2-ROW CANDIDATES LOOK SET TO MATCH HYBRID BARLEY YIELDS
Growers looking for a step up in winter barley yield should look no further than KWS Glacier which has a 3% yield advantage over current on-farm favourite, KWS Cassia.
No Recommended List variety beats it for yield in the Eastern Region where it is 4% higher yielding than Retriever and on heavy land KWS Glacier is also the top performer with a 2% yield advantage over the hybrid six-row, Volume.
According to the company’s barley breeder, David Harrap, the breakthrough yield in KWS Glacier has come from combining the vigour and tillering capacity of Retriever with the typical bold grained nature of current on farm favourites Saffron and KWS Cassia.
“Retriever is a strong growing barley and one that does well in stressful conditions, however, it often fails to deliver a decent sample, simply as a result of being unable to fill the high number of grains on the large number of tillers it produces,” he says.
“So, by crossing it with KWS Cassia – both of which are varieties that have a strong finish and excellent grain-fill – we have managed to combine the best of both sets of parent characteristics in KWS Glacier.
Mr Harrap also points out that the use of Retriever as a parent can also help improve barley performance in a second cereal situation. “It always does well in this slot in our trials, but on our first cereal sites has the tendency to produce more tillers and extra grain which it often fails to fill.
“With KWS Glacier we seem to have combined the best of both varieties to ensure a strong performance in either a first or second cereal situation is equally good,” he suggests.
“At 69.9kg/hl KWS Glacier has a similar bold grain to that of market leader KWS Cassia; add to this some excellent low screening levels and KWS Glacier has the potential to deliver an excellent sample on farm,” he says.
KWS Glacier is BaYMV resistant and a relatively early ripening variety – a day ahead of KWS Cassia and Saffron. It is a short, stiff strawed two-row, with a 7 for resistance to lodging, so stands strong and delivers. Indeed, across official trials it has an unbeatable lodging score of just 1% treated and untreated.
KWS Glacier also offers good disease resistance with 6-ratings for the wet weather diseases Rhynchosporium and net blotch, and combines this with a yellow rust rating of 7.
In terms of agronomy and the ability to produce the highest yields, Mr Harrap suggests that growers look to drill KWS Glacier reasonably early from mid-September.
“It is a higher tillering two-row, so lower seed rates may suffice, but this depends upon local conditions and seedbeds and growers should aim for a spring population of around 300 plants/m2,” he says.
While Defra’s RB209 guidelines recommend up to 210kg/ha N on poorer soils on the most fertile of land, yields of 10-11t/ha are possible and here higher rates of 220kg/ha could be justified.
“We’ve seen yields from KWS Glacier of average 11.59t/ha across 117 individual plots in our development work, but this is really throwing the book at the crop, including an autumn fungicide,” says Mr Harrap.
Mr Harrap says that KWS Glacier – selected from Retriever crosses made seven years ago – has benefited from KWS’s fast track breeding process, aimed at delivering new top yielding varieties to growers as quickly as possible. “We look to be a couple of years ahead of other breeders with this technique and should continue to make advances,” he says.
BARLEY CAN BE THE BEST SECOND CEREAL
New data from joint ADAS/KWS trials suggests that barleys can be the best bet in the second cereal slot, offering gross margin advantages of over £300/t over the best wheats.
The work, completed last harvest, commissioned ADAS to run a three year replicated trial at Rosemaund growing winter barley varieties side by side with the best second wheats. It was replicated by KWS at Cambridge over the same three seasons.
The wheats and barleys were given a belt and braces crop production programme to test their true potential in a second cereal situation – a protocol that included take-all protection on the wheats from Latitude treated seed.
According to project coordinator, KWS product development manager, John Miles, the aim was to ensure inputs weren’t limiting and that each crop was pushed hard for yield. Winter wheats received 220kg/ha N, the barleys, 40kg/ha less; wheats had T0, T1, T2 and T3 sprays costing approximately £90/ha, the barley’s three fungicides at £60ha.
In all but one of the six trial comparisons over the three contrasting seasons, the two-row barleys KWS Cassia or KWS Glacier outyielded winter wheats including Grafton and JB Diego.
“While we knew that the barleys had the potential to perform we were surprised at their relative yields compared to the best second wheats,” he says. “Across the three years, the winter barleys were, on average, 1.5t/ha ahead of the second wheats. That’s a significant yield advantage and one that cannot be ignored.”
Applying a mid-September delivered price for both crops across the three years, winter barley gave a mean gross margin – without factoring in the value of any straw – that was £270/ha ahead of second wheat.
On the back of the first two years of the work, KWS carried out large-scale 0.6ha field plot work at their Product Development Site on the Yorks Wolds. Here, while there was much more variation in yields, winter barley again outperformed winter wheat – this time by 0.9t/ha, giving a mean gross margin advantage for barley of around £40/ha.
“If straw is included, the value of barley as a second cereal improves still further,” says Mr Miles. “While values will vary according to season and crop location, figures from John Nix’s Farm Management Pocketbook suggest that the average additional value of barley over wheat straw over the last ten years is worth an extra £37/ha.
“Factor this into the equation across both sets of trials and the gross margin from a feed barley crop increases and generates significantly more than that secured by the best second wheat varieties,” he says.
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