Cereals 15th-16th June 2011

PRESS RELEASE   

4 May 2011

Latest varieties on show at Cereals 2011

 

Hundreds of cereals, oilseed and root crop varieties will be on show at this year’s Cereals Event, including the latest additions to the various Recommended Lists vying for a place in growers’ sowing plans.

There’s no better place than the Crop Plots at Cereals 2011 for farmers to scrutinise potential candidates for their arable acres, whether they are looking for varieties that make a better match for their markets or for improved agronomic traits to suit their farm.

The event takes place on Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th June on Patrick Dean Ltd’s land at Boothby Graffoe, Lincolnshire.

“Many of the 23,500 or more visitors will be seeking expert advice on what should be filling their drills over next season and beyond,” says event director Jon Day. “With so much knowledge on tap, Cereals 2011 is best place to find the answers they need.”

The HGCA stand will be a key draw, with 127 combinable crop varieties available for inspection. Plots include varieties already on the Recommended Lists and candidates vying for a place next November. Guided tours of the wheat and barley plots are available, lasting 30 to 45 minutes. New for this year is the inclusion of a short five-minute market outlook from an HGCA market analyst at the beginning of each tour.

On the wheat tours Dr Simon Oxley and Bill Handley will give details of field performance with a representative of the UK milling industry describing the suitability of each variety. On the barley tours, Peter Hanson and a UK malting industry representative will summarise the current crop of winter and spring barley varieties.

Syngenta is displaying a range of new varieties. Oilseed rapes NK Grandia, Tactic and Boheme will provide a starting point, while the outlook for high-yielding bread-making wheat Gallant will be examined as it grows in popularity among millers and bakers.

New cereal varieties include a new two-row winter barley with malting potential, SY Venture; a potential biscuit-making winter wheat, SY Epson; and a new winter barley hybrid candidate SY Bamboo. Spring barleys Propino and Shuffle, and Syngenta developments in beans, potatoes and sugar beet also feature at the event.

Limagrain has a clutch of varieties coming forward, including three wheats - Horatio, a potential distiller, feed type Avatar and potential breadmaker Crusoe. Six high-yielding barleys are also on show – Archer, a winter malting barley, three spring malters, Chronicle, Odyssey and Overture, and two winter feed types, Canyon and Matros. Rascal oilseed rape is a conventional variety claimed to have excellent yield potential.

Better known for its OSR portfolio, breeder DSV is launching its first winter wheat to UK farmers at Cereals 2011. Chilton, an Option/Solstice cross undergoing National Listing, is a high performance Group 2 with high Hagberg and specific weight. Suitable for ukp (export breadmaking), the variety also performs well as a second wheat, thanks to an eyespot rating of 9, says DSV.

The main focus on the KWS Stand is likely to be barnfiller KWS Santiago, which leads the Recommended List on yield at 108% of controls. Two new high quality wheats will be introduced - KWS Podium looks to have top end Group 2 quality and KWS Target is a true Group 3.

Two new recommended OSR varieties, high-yielding hybrid, Rhino, and conventional variety Cash, will also be on show, as will two sugar beet varieties, Rosalinda KWS, the top-yielding variety on the 2012 BBRO Recommended List, and newcomer Isabella KWS, offering double resistance to Rhizomania.

Elsoms is showing five sugar beet varieties recently added to the Recommended List. Badger, Cayman and Lipizzan are SESVanderHave varieties, offering significant increases in sugar yield, as well as exceptionally low bolting scores from early sowing, the company claims.

Columbus and Pasteur from the Strube stable are also high yielding with comparatively low bolting scores. Elsoms is also showing Abaco, a new short, early maturing winter oilseed rape said to have exceptionally good resistance to light leaf spot.

Two new cereal varieties from Senova joining the 2011/12 Recommended List feature at this year’s Cereals Event. Florentine, a new two-row feed winter barley, combines high yield with excellent disease resistance and very stiff straw, making it easy to manage and cheap to grow, says the company. Spring wheat Mulika is the first-ever Group 1 wheat with orange wheat blossom midge resistance.

Collaborative work to develop oat varieties that meet the demands of end users and growers will be showcased on the Just Oats section of Senova’s stand.

Dekalb will be presenting three complementary new high-performance hybrid oilseed rape varieties from its market-leading pipeline at the event. RL candidate DK ExPower is being widely tested in commercial production this season. Like that variety, other newcomers DK Excellium and continental list-topping DK ExStorm are both high oil varieties carrying the RLM7 phoma resistance gene and featuring strong agronomic packages for performance consistency.
Tickets for Cereals 2011 are now available online at www.cerealsevent.co.uk/tickets. It costs £20 for a standard adult ticket, while students pay just £17. Visitors will also qualify for 2 NRoSO CPD points / 4 BASIS points for attending either day.

For more information on Cereals 2011 go to www.cerealsevent.co.uk
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Notes to Editors
The Cereals Event

• The Cereals Event is the leading technical event for the UK arable industry with over 64ha of stands and live demonstrations including crop plots, working demonstrations, the Sprays & Sprayers arena and renewables, an area specially dedicated to renewable energy, biofuel and non-food crops.
• Over 400 leading suppliers are already preparing to keep visitors up to date with the very latest products, advice and information; offering a complete one-stop service from seeds to sprayers, crop varieties to cultivation equipment, fertiliser to finance.
• Cereals brings together over 23,500 professional farmers and industry experts over two days. For more details go to www.cerealsevent.co.uk
• The Cereals Event is organised and presented by Haymarket Exhibitions Ltd.
• Farmers Weekly and Crops are the media partners for Cereals
• Tickets cost £20 per adult and £17 per student and can be booked online at www.cerealsevent.co.uk/tickets

HSBC Agriculture
HSBC Agriculture is Principal Sponsor of the Cereals Event.  HSBC Agriculture provides a specialist service to agriculture and agribusiness customers throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland with a team of over 50 dedicated managers that concentrate exclusively on the needs of farmers and growers. www.hsbc.co.uk/agriculture
Contacts:

Robert Harris	Jon Day
Cereals Event PR	Event Director
Robert Harris Communications	Haymarket Business Exhibitions
01424 883383	01788 892042
07768 402850	07717 541500
robert@roberthcomms.co.uk	jon.day@haymarket.com

PRESS RELEASE   

26 April 2011

Innovative science at the heart of Cereals

Crop plots are once again taking centre stage at the Cereals Event, offering visitors an unrivalled real-life picture of the latest crop management innovations and the science that lies behind them.

No other venue combines such a rich mix of information from researchers, technicians and agronomists with such a practical resource, says event director Jon Day.

“The crop plots bring important and often complex messages to life, showing not only what is being done behind the scenes to advance the UK arable sector, but also how best to put those findings into practice on the farm.

“The plots are one of the key reasons why Cereals has become Europe’s leading technical arable event.”

More than 23,500 visitors are expected to attend Cereals 2011, which takes place on Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th June at Boothby Graffoe, Lincolnshire.

Weed control gets a topical airing on the Association of Independent Crop Consultants’ plots. The effectiveness of a range of pre- and early post-emergence chemistry against three important grassweeds – blackgrass, sterile brome and ryegrass – and a strip of mixed broadleaved weeds is being assessed. In addition, half the area has also received a follow-up spray of Atlantis.

 

“We hope visitors will come along and discuss the findings and see how results compare with their own farm practice, ” says the AICC’s Peter Taylor.

The performance of a new SDHI fungicide will be also compared against a standard triazole treatment to reveal any benefits from the new chemistry.

Fungicide inputs will also come under the spotlight on the Rothamsted Research plots. Bill Clark, director of Broom’s Barn, part of Rothamsted, reckons the average wheat grower stands to lose £120/ha due to sub-optimal fungicide use with wheat prices at £180/t.

Potential ways to tackle drought resistance in wheats will also be on show – 30% of the UK wheat area is grown on drought-prone land, notably the eastern counties which suffer in most summers.

Other Rothamsted plots will demonstrate the symptoms and effects of viruses on a range of different crops, namely barley, oilseed rape, potatoes and sugar beet, and highlight their effect as yield reducer and the importance of timely control. Further work includes:

• The effect of light leaf spot and phoma in oilseed rape
• Control of pollen beetle using diversion crops
• Latest take-all work demonstrating resistance in wild species
• The effect of different wheat canopy structures on nitrogen uptake efficiency.

 

HGCA is examining fungicide performance across three crops, applying a range of materials, including the new SDHIs, to wheat, barley and oilseed rape. "We expect a lot of interest this year following the introduction of this new fungicide group to one of our ongoing flagship funded programmes," says HGCA's Dr Susannah Bolton.

 

The effectiveness of using higher wheat plant populations to out-compete blackgrass to help take the pressure off chemical control is also being assessed. And HGCA is examining the potential value of a range of different micronutrients and how these might affect crop quality and yield.

NIAB TAG is focusing on its core crop variety and agronomy business, highlighting genetic improvement, new varieties, matched agronomy, husbandry advice and improvements in production systems.

Visitors can view cereal plots from the Smart Carbs project, which is developing varieties with different starch properties to improve nutritional content or provide new end-market opportunities. And beans developed for different uses and growing conditions as part of the DEFRA-funded Pulse Crop Genetic Improvement Network (PCGIN) will be displayed.

NIAB’s new Innovation Farm project will be aired. This highlights the contribution of advanced breeding and genetics and introduces new plant traits and crops that could become a common sight on UK farms in the future. At Cereals 2011 the focus is on the potential for innovation in developing new barley varieties.

Velcourt is also taking an in-depth look at plant genetics, and the tools and research techniques breeders use to create new varieties.

The development of more robust and durable wheats suitable for UK agriculture in the 2020s is a main feature. Velcourt is demonstrating how both NIAB synthetic hexaploid wheats and the Wheat Genetic Improvement Network  (WGIN) can deliver novel traits, such as improved efficiency of nitrogen uptake, increased photosynthetic area, optimum crop heights and drought resistance, to help boost the agronomic performance and yields of the UK wheat crop.

 

“We will also have a very visual plot demonstrating the timeline and technology that’s needed to breed a wheat variety, from first cross through purification, selection and multiplication,” says technical director Keith Norman.

Bayer’s main focus is on its recently launched SDHI fungicides, the Xpro cereal range, Aviator235Xpro for wheat and SiltraXpro for barley. These are claimed to deliver up to 0.5t/ha and 0.25t/ha respectively through better disease control, longer lasting activity and crop greening effects.

Syngenta will review its new SDHI fungicide for winter wheat Seguris, following its launch earlier this season, and sister product Bontima, which, in combination high-output hybrid barley, is said to take yields to the next level.

Both companies are highlighting the increasingly challenging topic of blackgrass control, emphasising integrated cultural and improved herbicide control, including the use of sophisticated pre-emergence herbicide mixtures.

Tickets for Cereals 2011 are now available online at www.cerealsevent.co.uk/tickets. It costs £20 for a standard adult ticket, while students pay just £17.

Visitors will also qualify for 2 NRoSO CPD points / 4 BASIS points for attending either day.

For more information on Cereals 2011 go to www.cerealsevent.co.uk
[Ends.902.words]

Notes to Editors
The Cereals Event

• The Cereals Event is the leading technical event for the UK arable industry with over 64ha of stands and live demonstrations including crop plots, working demonstrations, the Sprays & Sprayers arena and renewables, an area specially dedicated to renewable energy, biofuel and non-food crops.
• Over 400 leading suppliers are already preparing to keep visitors up to date with the very latest products, advice and information; offering a complete one-stop service from seeds to sprayers, crop varieties to cultivation equipment, fertiliser to finance.
• Cereals brings together over 23,500 professional farmers and industry experts over two days. For more details go to www.cerealsevent.co.uk
• The Cereals Event is organised and presented by Haymarket Exhibitions Ltd.
• Farmers Weekly and Crops are the media partners for Cereals.

Tickets cost £20 per adult and £17 per student and can be booked online at www.cerealsevent.co.uk/tickets
HSBC Agriculture
HSBC Agriculture is Principal Sponsor of the Cereals Event.  HSBC Agriculture provides a specialist service to agriculture and agribusiness customers throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland with a team of over 50 dedicated managers that concentrate exclusively on the needs of farmers and growers. www.hsbc.co.uk/agriculture
Contacts:

Robert Harris	Jon Day
Cereals Event PR	Event Director
Robert Harris Communications	Haymarket Business Exhibitions
01424 883383	01788 892042
07768 402850	07717 541500
robert@roberthcomms.co.uk	jon.day@haymarket.com

www.cerealsevent.co.uk